KKK license plate???

[Turock]

You want freedom, or someone to dictate what you can do with the things you own.

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

I don't think 90% of the American population knows about the stars and bars. They usually think of the "Stainless Banner" when they think confederate flag. Much more recognizable.

Outside of the US anyway, the "Stars and Bars" is the commonly associated Confederate flag.

(the one where the cross fills the entire flag, opposed to the ones where the cross only takes up part of the flag)

 

[Turock]

Outside of the US anyway, the "Stars and Bars" is the commonly associated Confederate flag.

(the one where the cross fills the entire flag, opposed to the ones where the cross only takes up part of the flag)

Well, that's not the "Stars and Bars". That's the "Stainless Banner".

 

[Relic]

Although I may disagree with what some groups may have to say, I defend their right to say it. (Of course if you end up getting your ass kicked frequently, I'm not all that surprised or offended.)

Yeah. I don't like this whole affair but I agree with Phalex here.
just how do you go about deciding what's permitted and what's not?
I've seen Stalin on T-shirts and whatnot with the blissfully ignorant person wearing it likely unaware that the subject of their fashion statement is/was responsible for about 20 million+ deaths.
Although I' love to rip the shirt off and make them eat it, I cannot.
If I believe that I should be able to express my opinion freely, then how can I tell others that they cannot?

 

[anonymous122511]

Into the third page of a discussion of the Klan and no mention of Albert Pike? Hmmmm.......

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Well, that's not the "Stars and Bars". That's the "Stainless Banner".

Ahh, I was getting the whole "battle flag" bit confuddled. My bad!

 

[LiquidMidnight]

You want freedom, or someone to dictate what you can do with the things you own.

I don't think the issue is so much with owning a particular license plate but rather that the government is producing and legitimizing a license plate that is commerating someone believed to be associted with an early version of the KKK.

 

[Steve]

I have no opinion on the license plate other than to acknowledge that right or wrong, it's a lightning rod.

But...


There's so much more to the thing than the masses realize. Bunches of people in the south sacrificing something or everything for what they believed to be a good and just cause. Most of which had nothing what-so-ever to do with slavery or oppression of anyone other than the oppression of themselves and their way of life.

History get's written by the winners. The losers get turned into caricatures.


It's kinda sad that whenever any southerner wants to honor anyone that had anything at all to do with that period in history in the south, a bunch of people that have ZERO dog in the hunt come out of the woodwork with torches and pitchforks. Last I heard, the issue was settled in 1865. Y'all won. We get that. Don't you think it's about time you stopped grinding your holier than thou boot heel into the issue?

It's a shame one southern general didn't have the foresight to move to Vermont with his family and buy a hotel.

 

[nutdog]

I don't think 90% of the American population knows about the stars and bars. They usually think of the "Stainless Banner" when they think confederate flag. Much more recognizable.

When I hear Stars and Bars I usually think of the Confederate Battle Flag, even though I know it is not the same. This seems to be the one at the heart of most controversies. I doubt many could identify the Stars and Bars or would know that the Confederate flag went through several evolutions.

Yeah. I just quoted myself. It is a perfect fit here. I am neither for, nor against this guy being commemorated on a state-issued plate. But, I am all for making douchebags and dolts easily identified. Same principle I use around here with the John Deere, camo, and the little deer hunting stickers all over the vehicles. They are all indicators that let you know when to say words like "gyros" incorrectly, so as to be understood.

Something tells me they don't need a sign to sense your air of superiority.

When Georgia went through the whole flag thing (several times) I could understand why it was offensive to many people and felt the right thing to do was change it. I also like Charlie Daniels' song "The South's Gonna Do It Again". Sorry guys, but the bass line is tight.

Our state is in the process of attempting to cash in on the 150th anniversary of the war. Perhaps the license plate has something to do with that. If they didn't want it I might never have known that Forrest was perhaps the Robert Byrd of his time.

One thing I've wondered about: U.S. Grant was, from what I've read, a drunk and ran one of the most corrupt administrations in history. Yet he's on the $50 bill. Is this an example of northerners still fighting the war?

 

[MIJ-VI]

The situation in Antebellum Louisana was exceptional because for most of its history, Louisana was not an English speaking territory. Because of that cultural difference, mixed people in Southern Louisiana were allowed a status between black and white, and were able to gain property, including slaves, in numbers that were far greater than in other regions of the South. The "Colored Confederates" did not see themselves as Black anymore than many brownskinned Domincans or Venzuelans see themselves as black today.

Of equal importance was the fact that when the war was over, former mixed race slave owners found themselves discriminated against and relegated to the status of blacks. It is not an accident that Plessy, in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case that established segregation, was a man from Louisiana fair enough to pass for white.

As for the KKK trying to "peacefully" convince blacks to accept a lower status after the war, that is pretty silly on its face. I'm a historian, but I'm no Civil War expert, I do know that there are thousands of books and articles that are much less sympathetic to the confederate side than the material that has cited in this thread. To get any idea of how blacks were treated immediately after the war, one can look up Black Codes. No one who has been given freedom would ever willingly submit to such treatment. The idea that KKK was ever non-violent, is wishful thinking.

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses (particularly railroads), under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan. Associate Justice David Josiah Brewer was absent at the ruling because of his daughter's sudden death the day before. "Separate but equal" remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the New Orleans Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens), which had brought the suit and arranged for Homer Plessy's arrest in order to challenge Louisiana's segregation law, replied, “We, as freemen, still believe that we were right and our cause is sacred.”[1]

EDIT: more...

Since railroad development was the key to wealth-building back then, this move appears to have been primarily aimed at preventing non-whites from achieving a degree of prosperity leading to political power.

Invalid Link Removed

The Black Codes were unofficial laws put in place in the United States to limit the basic human rights and civil liberties of blacks. Even though the U.S. constitution originally discriminated against blacks (as "other persons"[1]) and both Northern and Southern states had passed discriminatory legislation from the early 19th century, the term Black Codes is used most often to refer to legislation passed by Southern states at the end of the Civil War to control the labor, migration and other activities of newly-freed slaves.

In Texas, the Eleventh Legislature produced these codes in 1866, right after the United States Civil War. The intent of the legislation was to reaffirm the inferior position that slaves and free blacks had held in antebellum Texas and to regulate black labor. The codes reflected the unwillingness of white Texans to accept blacks as equals and also their fears that freedmen would not work unless coerced. Thus the codes continued legal discrimination between whites and blacks. The legislature, when it amended the 1856 penal code, emphasized the continuing line between whites and blacks by defining all individuals with one-eighth or more African blood as persons of color, subject to special provisions in the law. [2]

The black codes enacted immediately after the American Civil War, though varying from state to state, were all intended to secure a steady supply of cheap labor and all continued to assume the inferiority of the freed slaves. The black codes had their roots in the slave codes that had formerly been in effect. The premise behind chattel slavery in America was that slaves were property, and, as such, they had few or no legal rights. The slave codes, in their many loosely-defined forms, were seen as effective tools against slave unrest, particularly as a hedge against uprisings and runaways. Enforcement of slave codes also varied, but corporal punishment was widely and harshly employed to great effect. [3]

This seems like busine$$ as usual...

In a follow-the-money analysis, it would appear that if the American Civil War had anything to do with 'freeing the slaves' then that action's main motivations would've been to undercut the slave labour-based economy of the largely agricultural South (thus crippling a major economic competitor) while supplying the then recently industrialized North with an abundance of cheap labour that would have had the effect of further depressing the costs associated with wages, working conditions, and worker safety.

This in turn would've helped to encourage the flood of indigent European immigrants of the time to endure the hardships and dangers of homesteading the American west/forcibly stealing land from aboriginal peoples/creating future market$ for railroad owners instead of settling for a dirty, dangerous, poor-paying and dead end factory job in one of the North's big eastern cities.

 

[Dr. Cheese]

Shirley Sherrod admitted to thinking that white farmers needed no help. When she met poor white farmers, she helped them. How does that compare to Nathan Bedford
Forrest?

This trying to show equivalence where there is none.

 

[burk48237]

I'd have far less problem with an individual doing it on a personalized plate then I do the state doing it. Freedom of expression includes the freedom to identify yourself as an idiot. Should it be banned? Nope, but if someone wanted to start a boycott of the State because of it, I'd be the first to join them.

Having said so I suspect it's a non story. This is not a state government proposal. This is a proposal made to the State by a private group. There is no indication that anyone in the legislature is going to back the proposal or the governor is going to sign it. It is not even a proposal by a State Congressman, and I'm sure every state has one or two kooks in Congress. Sounds like a very poorly reported non-story if you ask me.

he Sons of Confederate Veterans proposed that Mississippi issue a specialty plate honoring General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who many historians say was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist group that terrorized blacks in the South after the Civil War

Forrest is the only individual they want to commemorate. All the other plates would be in remembrance of battles that took place in Mississippi or Confederate veterans as a whole.
The proposal must be approved by the state legislature and signed by Gov. Haley Barbour.

 

[Relic]

I have no opinion on the license plate other than to acknowledge that right or wrong, it's a lightning rod.

But...


There's so much more to the thing than the masses realize. Bunches of people in the south sacrificing something or everything for what they believed to be a good and just cause. Most of which had nothing what-so-ever to do with slavery or oppression of anyone other than the oppression of themselves and their way of life.

History get's written by the winners. The losers get turned into caricatures.


It's kinda sad that whenever any southerner wants to honor anyone that had anything at all to do with that period in history in the south, a bunch of people that have ZERO dog in the hunt come out of the woodwork with torches and pitchforks. Last I heard, the issue was settled in 1865. Y'all won. We get that. Don't you think it's about time you stopped grinding your holier than thou boot heel into the issue?

It's a shame one southern general didn't have the foresight to move to Vermont with his family and buy a hotel.

Well, I'm from NJ and I fully agree with what you are saying.
It's funny how what we did in 1776 is highly celebrated while what the southern states did in 1861 is highly demonized, when in reality both situations have some remarkable similarities.

The problem is that things tend to get over-simplified ex- slavery was wrong, the southern states were slave states, therefore the southern states were automatically "evil". The reality is so far more complex than that that it's not even funny. There were slave states on the Northern side, there were staunch abolitionists on the southern side, there were black soldiers fighting on both sides.... as I said, it gets complicated to the point where it's easier just to adapt a clear cut "good guy vs bad guy' mindset and that's what most folks do nowadays.

 

[Bassist Jay]

I believe the article says there is only speculation that the General was a member and first leader of the KKK. If that is the case, then the guy should not be held accountable to something that is only speculation and where no proof exists. I know I would be mad as heck if I went on trial and was found guilty because the D.A. could only speculate that I did something but no proof existed.

 

[Steve]

Yep. Kinda makes you wonder why we have brains if all we do is strike at the flash like some large mouth bass.

 

[Curtybob]

Something tells me they don't need a sign to sense your air of superiority.

Aww, that's sweet! Thanks! But, to be fair, most of them couldn't read a sign if I displayed one...

 

[anonymous122511]

I believe the article says there is only speculation that the General was a member and first leader of the KKK. If that is the case, then the guy should not be held accountable to something that is only speculation and where no proof exists. I know I would be mad as heck if I went on trial and was found guilty because the D.A. could only speculate that I did something but no proof existed.

But then again failure to speculate based on what is known will cause you to miss a great deal. It's fair to discuss what is suspected with what is known as long as the two are distinct and separate....something a lot of folks seem unable keep straight.

 

[()smoke()]

Yeah. I just quoted myself. It is a perfect fit here. I am neither for, nor against this guy being commemorated on a state-issued plate. But, I am all for making douchebags and dolts easily identified. Same principle I use around here with the John Deere, camo, and the little deer hunting stickers all over the vehicles. They are all indicators that let you know when to say words like "gyros" incorrectly, so as to be understood.

what does a john Deere sticker signify where you live? everywhere I've been it's nothing more than a pretty good indicator the owner of the vehicle also owns or operates a tractor...do you assume people who grow your food or cotton for your textiles are dolts? seems harsh

 

[Relic]

what does a john Deere sticker signify where you live? everywhere I've been it's nothing more than a pretty good indicator the owner of the vehicle also owns or operates a tractor...do you assume people who grow your food or cotton for your textiles are dolts? seems harsh

I just read the post you quoted.
Wow, Curtybob - that was more than a little ignorant IMO. So "John Deere" tractors, camo and deer stickers allow you to completely judge a person? And how does that make you different from someone who judges someone based on skin color let's say?
Not accusing you of racism, just pointing out that your statement should maybe be a little better qualified?

 

[Clark Dark]

The governor is alledged to be making a run at the presidency in 2012. It would be political suicide at the national level if he would allow the license plate. Now the next governor might do it but I doubt this one will.