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| President Barack Obama attended Memorial Day services at Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday where he gave a speech and layed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. (Credit: Washington Post) (Video) |
On Memorial Day, Connection to Freed Slaves Is Muted
The origins of Memorial Day are not foremost in mind for those who think first of a long weekend, barbecues, flags and parades. Besides, there are competing claims for the title of “first,” and a 1966 presidential proclamation gave the distinction to Waterloo, N.Y.
Historian David W. Blight of Amherst College, however, has awarded the title to Charleston, S.C., and to freedmen who were paying homage to Union troops. Although Blight brought this revelation to light in his 2001 book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,” and written about it in the New York Times and elsewhere, the black connection has yet to pervade the national consciousness.
On Memorial Day, that was true even in the Charleston media. Cleve O’Quinn, night editor of the Post and Courier, the city’s daily, was in charge of the newsroom on Monday. Asked whether the newspaper recognized the city’s role in the celebration, O’Quinn replied by email, “We have nothing regarding that scheduled for Wednesday’s paper. And I’m sorry, but our research staff is off for the holiday.” It didn’t make WCIV-TV’s list of “Memorial Day events and deals around the Lowcountry.“
“The media is very habit-ridden,” Simon K. Lewis, who teaches African literature at the College of Charleston, explains. “They do certain things on Memorial Day. It takes a long, long time to nudge consciousness along.”
Last year, the city installed a marker on the old Washington Race Course, site of that Decoration Day. Next year, Lewis said, he hopes to celebrate the event as part of the Jubilee Project, commemorating the 150th anniersary of the Emancipation Proclamation, or perhaps the 50th anniversary of desegregation milestones.
When Blight made his discovery, he sought and received confirmation from local historian Damon Fordham, Lewis told Journal-isms by telephone. Here is how Blight described his findings in a 2011 piece for the Times:
“For the earliest and most remarkable Memorial Day, we must return to where the war began. By the spring of 1865, after a long siege and prolonged bombardment, the beautiful port city of Charleston, S.C., lay in ruin and occupied by Union troops. Among the first soldiers to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the 21st United States Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the city’s official surrender.
“Whites had largely abandoned the city, but thousands of blacks, mostly former slaves, had remained, and they conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war.
“The largest of these events, forgotten until I had some extraordinary luck in an archive at Harvard, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.
“After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, ‘Martyrs of the Race Course.’
“The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”
“The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song ‘John Brown’s Body.’ Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang ‘We’ll Rally Around the Flag,’ the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.
“After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.
“The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots.
“Despite the size and some newspaper coverage of the event, its memory was suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day. From 1876 on, after white Democrats took back control of South Carolina politics and the Lost Cause defined public memory and race relations, the day’s racecourse origin vanished. . . . “
- David W. Blight blog: “The First Decoration Day”
- Stanley Crouch, Daily News, New York: Honest imagery, saluting sacrifice
- Jim Downs, Huffington Post: Who Invented Memorial Day? (May 2012)
- Colbert I. King, Washington Post: Memorial Day deserves better
- Darryl E. Owens, Orlando Sentinel: Taps for man’s lost WWII cousin brings closure
- Jerry Large, Seattle Times: Memories that make history real
- Campbell Robertson, New York Times: Birthplace of Memorial Day? That Depends Where You’re From
- Bob Ray Sanders, Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas: Words of American poet have special meaning in time of mourning
- Barry Saunders, News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.: Children of Civil War veterans bring history to life
Undercover Journos Taste Syria’s Chemical Weapons
“Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have repeatedly used chemical weapons against rebel fighters in Damascus, according to first-hand accounts in France’s Le Monde newspaper,” Ingrid Melander reported Monday for Reuters.
“The newspaper, in a report issued on its website on Monday, said one of its photographers had suffered blurred vision and respiratory difficulties for four days after an attack on April 13 on the Jobar front, just inside central Damascus.
“Assad’s government and the rebels fighting to oust him have accused each other of using chemical weapons. U.N. investigators have been ready for weeks, but diplomatic wrangling and safety concerns have delayed their entry into Syria.
“Undercover in and around the Damascus area for two months alongside Syrian rebels, a Le Monde reporter and photographer said they had witnessed battlefield chemical attacks and had also talked to doctors and other witnesses of their aftermath.
“They describe men coughing violently, their eyes burning, their pupils shrinking. . . .”
Three weeks ago, President Obama said he would act against Syria if it is proven that the Assad government uses chemical weapons, David Jackson reported May 7 for USA Today, “but he warned against precipitate action based on ‘perceptions,’ citing the Iraq war as a cautionary tale.
” ‘I don’t make decisions based on “perceived,” ‘ Obama said at a news conference after meeting with the president of South Korea. ‘And I can’t organize international coalitions around “perceived.” ‘ “
Obama promised in August 2012 that the use of such arms by the authorities in Damascus would constitute the crossing of a ‘red line’ that would lead to a foreign intervention in Syria against the regime, Le Monde recalled.
The Le Monde report, by Jean-Philippe Rémy in Jobar, Syria, began:
“A chemical attack on the Jobar front, on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, doesn’t look like anything much at first. It’s not spectacular. Above all, it’s not detectable. And that’s the aim: by the time the rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army who have penetrated furthest into Damascus understand that they’ve been exposed to chemical products by government forces, it’s too late. No matter which type of gas is used, it has already produced its effects, only a few hundred meters from residential areas of the Syrian capital.
“At first, there is only a little sound, a metallic ping, almost a click. And in the confusion of daily combat in Jobar’s Bahra 1 sector, this sound didn’t catch the attention of the fighters of the Tahrir al-Sham (‘Liberation of Syria’) Brigade. ‘We thought it was a mortar that didn’t explode, and no one really paid attention to it,’ said Omar Haidar, chief of operations of the brigade, which holds this forward position less than 500 meters from Abbasid Square.
“Searching for words to describe the incongruous sound, he said it was like ‘a Pepsi can that falls to the ground.’ No odor, no smoke, not even a whistle to indicate the release of a toxic gas. And then the symptoms appear. The men cough violently. Their eyes burn, their pupils shrink, their vision blurs. Soon they experience difficulty breathing, sometimes in the extreme; they begin to vomit or lose consciousness. The fighters worst affected need to be evacuated before they suffocate. . . .”
- Reporters Without Borders: German freelancer held by Assad regime (May 14)
Administration Casting Wide Net for Sources Who Leaked
“Even before the F.B.I. conducted 550 interviews of officials and seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters in a leak investigation connected to a 2012 article about a Yemen bomb plot, agents had sought the same reporters’ sources for two other articles about terrorism,” Ethan Bronner, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane reported for the Sunday print edition of the New York Times.
“And agents tracing the leak of a highly classified C.I.A. report on North Korea to a Fox News reporter pulled electronic archives showing which officials had gained access to the report and had contact with the reporter on the day of the leak.
“The emerging details of these and other cases show just how wide a net the Obama administration has cast in its investigations into disclosures of government secrets, querying hundreds of officials across the federal government and even some of their foreign counterparts.
“The result has been an unprecedented six prosecutions and many more inquiries using aggressive legal and technical tactics. A vast majority of those questioned were cleared of any leaking. . . .”
They added, “Some officials are now declining to take calls from certain reporters, concerned that any contact may lead to investigation. Some complain of being taken from their offices to endure uncomfortable questioning. And the government officials typically must pay for lawyers themselves, unlike reporters for large news organizations whose companies provide legal representation.
“ ‘For every reporter that is dealing with this, there are hundreds of national security officials who feel under siege — without benefit of a corporate legal department or a media megaphone for support,’ said a former Obama administration official. ‘There are lots of people in the government spending lots of money on legal fees.’. . . “
- Fox News Latino and Associated Press: Chuck Schumer And Another ‘Gang Of Eight’ To Look At Media Leaks Of Government Secrets
- Rick Horowitz, YouTube: Consider the Source: Critics, or Crazies? (video)
- Evan McMurry, Mediaite: Brit Hume Dares Juan Williams: How Can Eric Holder Investigate Eric Holder?
- Evan McMurry, Mediaite: CBS’ Bob Schieffer Takes On Obama: ‘President Needs To Rethink His Entire Communications Policy’
- Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post Writers Group: The unspoken scandal
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Right-wing reflex: Blame Obama first
La. Could Jail Journalists Who Reveal Gun Permit Holders
“Journalists could face up to six months in prison and a $10,000 fine for reporting information about concealed handgun permits in Louisiana under a proposed law that appears headed to the state’s governor for signing,” Sasu Siegelbaum reported Monday for the Vienna-based International Press Institute.
“Louisiana’s Senate on Tuesday voted 33-2 in favour of the bill, which would make it illegal for journalists or members of the public to ‘release, disseminate, or make public in any manner any information contained in an application for a concealed handgun permit or any information regarding the identity of any person who applied for or received a concealed handgun permit’.
“International Press Institute (IPI) Deputy Director Anthony Mills said: ‘This bill is a clearly-unconstitutional prior restraint that would interfere with legitimate newsgathering activities. Its language, plainly read, could criminalise reporting on weaknesses or flaws in the state’s permit-granting process, and on crimes in which a handgun was involved. We urge Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to veto this measure.’
“IPI North American Committee Board Member Philip Gailey, former editor of editorials and vice president of the St. Petersburg Times, said that it was important to continue to highlight concerns over state-level initiatives amid recent revelations that the federal Justice Department has targeted journalists as part of investigations to uncover sources of leaked information.
“ ‘In much of the country the Second Amendment trumps the First Amendment — gun rights over a free press,’ he commented. ‘Both the Louisiana legislature and the Obama Justice Department view reporters doing their job as criminals. A dangerous line has been crossed. This is a reminder that the press’ First Amendment protection cannot be taken for granted. . . .’ ”
Would Obama Get as Much Grief if He Were Latino?
“Judging from reactions to remarks by the president and first lady during separate commencement speeches recently, I have to imagine that it’ll be a bit of a bummer for Hispanics if a Latino is ever elected president,” Esther J. Cepeda wrote for the Washington Post Writers Group.
“I don’t particularly care for Barack Obama’s politics, but I hate seeing him ripped for not being ‘black enough,’ not giving blacks enough favor or enough credit.
“In the days since Obama addressed Morehouse College graduates, he’s become a Bill Cosby figure, labeled a finger-wagger for using his time in front of one of the largest gatherings of young, elite African-American males to restate his belief in the power of hard work and personal responsibility.
Cepeda added, “Yet I can easily see that if a Hispanic were to be elected president, similar attacks by Latinos on such seemingly self-evident expressions of character would further confuse a non-Hispanic population that’s already mixed up about who Latinos are and what they believe in. . . .”
- Jack White, the Root: Obama at Morehouse: Try Another Listen
Soul of the South Network Makes Debut
Soul of the South network, the only one of the new African American-oriented television networks that promises original programming and news, made its debut Monday.
“The new network will be distributed initially by over-the-air stations and on digital channels on the broadcast spectrum but also plans to air on cable and expects its stations to qualify under FCC must-carry rules (which mandate nearby cable systems must carry it) because it is local and offers unique news programming,” according to the station’s website.
Tom Jacobs, the national news director, told Journal-isms its one-hour newscast would launch on July 1 and that a dozen people have been hired. “We will ramp up gradually to four hours a day,” Monday through Friday, he said. An hourlong political talk show would originate from Washington in early September and a two-hour morning show from Little Rock, Ark., its base, in September, featuring reports from around the South and D.C.
The network’s primary creator is Edwin Avent, former publisher of Heart & Soul magazine.
