Dia de Los Muertos

 It has just recently come to my attention that a local non-Latino business has an upcoming event featuring a planned day of festivities built around the traditional Mexican holiday, Dia de Los Muertos. Their purpose? To mourn the passing of temperate weather that allows participation in a particular outdoor activity.

I completely understand the grief when the weather begins to turn intemperate. On this, I can commiserate. However, this “loss” is not representative of the beliefs and traditions with which many Latinos, particularly those of Mexican ancestry, view this holiday.

Using Dia de Los Muertos to serve as an event backdrop takes a very sacred, meaningful holiday and disregards the thousands of year-old history. Inviting participants to "take advantage of the Halloween season and get their sugar skull costumes ready" is incredibly tone-deaf and uninformed on the true meaning of this holiday. It disrespects the real living people for whom it holds great significance. It converts it into a Halloween spirited license to appropriate our culture, dress up in our traditions, eat tacos and drink beer. FYI. We do recognize that our traditions look really, really cool! And yes, eating tacos and drinking beer is sacred in its own right. On the other hand, appropriating another’s culture for a big drinking party, especially a cultural tradition centered on remembering and honoring our dead, not so much.

Yes, many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans do have celebratory parties and some may use face paint, dress as a skeleton or La Calavera Catrina (Lady of the Dead). However, our culture is not a Halloween event or costume for the general public to play dress up, go trick-or-treating, or to wear to parties. We do understand that the beauty of our traditions and celebrations are incredibly attractive, but it is so much more than calaveras on t-shirts, eating, drinking and painting one’s face.

Dia de Los Muertos has its roots in over 3,000 years of various forms of use in pre-Colombian and Mexican culture. It continues to be observed in various ways in many Central and South American countries. For many Indigenous people death was not viewed as something to be afraid of, but rather a next step. Many believed in the three deaths. The first when the body ceases to function. Second when the body is returned to the earth. And the third and final death when there is no one left to remember us. 

Dia de Los Muertos is a special time that we remember with intent, our ancestors, and our loved ones who have died. We celebrate their lives, we tell stories about them. We clean their graves, offer prayers, set out altars with their pictures, and a few of their favorite things as offerings. Food, drink, candles and marigolds are set out. It is believed that the spirits will return to where they are welcomed and that they will be hungry and thirsty from their journey. The scent of the flowers also draws their attention.

Skulls, real and fabricated, as well as skull masks, were used to celebrate life and rebirth in Mexico. The tradition of the sugar skull (calaveras de azúcar or calaveras) comes from the desire to remember that life, and to capture the joy, vibrancy and sweetness of the deceased. Often the name of a loved one will be placed on the forehead of a sugar skull.

There are two days in this celebration. November 1st and November 2nd. The first of November is the day of the children (Dia de los Angelitos). It is believed that at midnight on October 31st, the souls of the deceased children re-enter our world and visit for 24 hours. On November 2nd, the spirits of the adults also rejoin this plane.

There is a harsh reality that for many in America of Mexican ancestry, they are negatively impacted by our broken immigration system and the lack of any real political will to enact meaningful reforms. For many, even with citizenship, they find that it still does not offer armor against this country’s endemic, systemic and institutional racism that is felt in a variety of negative ways. They find themselves constantly up against it in education, employment, housing, and healthcare access, disproportionate arrest and imprisonment rates, etc. Ugly stereotypes about who we are abound. Non-Latinos, particularly white people, use our culture for a party, playing at dress up. Afterwards they can then remove their costumes, they can wipe off the face paint and continue business as usual in their privilege of whiteness.

This is not to say that one who is not a part of this culture cannot respectfully participate. You can attend events created by us when they are open to the public. You can bring your pictures and offrendas for your loved one. In that space you can celebrate your ancestors with us. And just as you might attend any other culture’s traditional celebrations, you enjoy them as a guest. There’s no need to wear a costume or paint your face. That’s what the Halloween parties are for, but again please do not appropriate the culture of others and do not go as a stereotype. Be creative.

Finally, please remember that the terms Latino and Hispanic cover a diverse array of countries and cultural beliefs. Not all celebrate Dia de los Muertos the same, if they observe it at all. Even among ourselves, we encounter struggles between those who observe our traditions as a part of their own historical culture and those who although they are Latino, may promote an event and seemingly, intentionally or not, “legitimize” the use of a culture that is not their own.

For Aylan Kurdi - AKA Drowned 3 Year Old Syrian Refugee Boy Lying on a Turkish Beach

The littlest boy

cradle of sand

waves gently

erasing the

possibility

of who he could

have been as he felt

the terror of slipping

from mother's grasp

siblings disappearing

their crying washed

out of their mouths

not even old enough

to know of, to call upon

their Creator for rescue

dying alone in the dark

for no one cared

about the stranger

in their midst

Heads of state

argue that they

can allow no more

of "those people"

for fear that they

will taint their pristine

language, their Jesus,

their bloodlines

their precious votes

they are sorry but

there's just not enough

to take care of their own

And Neptune yawns

and stretches his arms

leaving behind another

little boy whose breath

fled before the sea

the stars above his face

the last thing he ever saw

before he became

grist for the media mill

a CNN loop of the day

a FaceBook "like"

a casualty of the

incivility of civil war

and the beams that

are lodged in their eyes

splintered by tongues,

hues and shrines

Romo © 9/2015

Proposed Name Change for Confederate Blvd. in Little Rock Ignites Confederate Legacy Opposition

The symbols of the Confederacy have come under fire in the wake of the recent massacre of nine Black people in Charleston, S.C. by self-avowed white supremacist, Dylann Roof. 

Grasping the horror of the murders and the white supremacist symbolism embraced by Roof that included the Confederate battle flag; some states and companies are shifting their stance on the Confederate battle flag and other Confederacy pharaphinalia. Companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon, E-Bay and Sears will no longer carry these items.

The Governor of Alabama  quickley ordered the battle flag removed from the Capitol grounds. The South Carolina Senate has voted for removal, the Governor promises to sign the bill if it passes the House. And in Little Rock, an effort by Dr. Anika Whitfield has been initiated to remove the name of Confederate Blvd. The new name proposed is Springer, named for an African-American family with a long history in the area. The name change will require a vote of the City Directors.

City Director Kathy Webb, who is white, came out in support of this name change stating, "Having something like a street or the flag, it's a symbol of slavery and it's a symbol of oppression and I don't think it's something we need to have."

After making her support known, Director Webb has received a significant amount of pushback. Some have gone so far as to threaten to not vote for future political endeavors if she continues to support the name change.  

"Heritage not Hate" is the leading cry of resistance, along with claims of honoring the Confederate dead buried nearby in the National Cemetery. For the record, this cemetery also holds the graves of Union soldiers. Furthermore, there is a monument inside the cemetery erected in1884 that serves the purpose of honoring the Confederate dead buried there.

As the name of the street and its meaning is debated, we cannot forget that Dylann Roof targeted his victims because they were Black. It was his wish to start a race war. Photos of him have surfaced posing with the Confederate battle flag and a gun. He visited Confederate soldier's graves, other Confederate heritage sites and slavery museums. His written manifesto and actions clearly exhibit his connection to the cause of white supremacy through the lens of the Confederacy. 

The KKK surfaced in Arkansas in 1868 formed by Confederate war veterans. Their purpose was to oppose and disrupt through any means necessary, usually with violence, the efforts of Reconstruction. In particular any policies that elevated the rights of the African-American population. Not only did they terrorize and attack Black people's bodies and properties, they also violently attacked white Republicans who advocated these policies. 

So determined was the Klan to destroy any campaigns to rebuild the state to include the voice and will of Black people that they assassinated one of the leading proponents of these policies, sitting Arkansas U.S. Representative, James Hind. In that same ambush in Monroe County, they also severely wounded Arkansas  State Representative Joseph Brooks. 

Prior to the war, the South’s economy depended on slavery. Second only to agriculture, the internal slave trade was the largest economic enterprise in the South. At the beginning of the war there were 4 million slaves in the South with a value of 4 Billion dollars. 

In the Southern secession statements they unabashedly proclaim slavery as the cause of their scession. (Samples follow at the end of this article)

Yes, it's true that the United States, in its entirety, is complicit and bears the weight of the holocaust committed against millions of Africans and their descendants. But it was the South who violently resisted the end of slavery, going so far as to leave the Union and starting a war to keep it, a war that killed 620,000 men. Over slavery. 

The heritage of the Confederacy with its symbols and monuments; exalts a romanticized, Gone With the Wind version of a brutal, bloody history that is founded in the perpetuity of white supremacy. To claim that Dylann Roof was a lone, mentally unstable young man, is to whitewash the 150 years of violence post-Civil War that has been done to deprive Black people from an equal place in America.

The experiences of white people under the symbols of the Confederacy are for the majority vastly different than those of Black people. Here in the South we still have living historians in Black families who know the stories, or have witnessed, or experienced themselves, what was done to Blacks in the South under Jim Crow and segregation. 

Arkansas claims the dubious ranking of fourth (503 lynchings) in the listing of 12 Southern states with racial terror lynchings from 1877-1950. These lynchings were to enforce Jim Crow laws and segregation. 

In 1918, white citizens in Earle, Arkansas cut Elton Mitchell into pieces with butcher knives for refusing to work for free. His killers hung his butchered body parts from a tree. 

In 1919 Black sharecroppers in Elaine, AR began organizing and meeting to gain fair payment for their crops. A skirmish between the meeting's armed guard's and three white men on the street led to the death of one of the white men and another being wounded. As a result 237 African-Americans were hunted down and murdered (lynched) by vigilantes, deputized citizenry and 600 white troops from the U.S. military. No white person was ever charged in the killings. However 122 African-Americans were charged with various crimes.  

The first twelve men to go on trial were charged with murder and given the death sentence. Sixty-five others quickly entered pleas for second-degree murder and were sentenced to as much as 21 years. The rest were dismissed or were not prosecuted. It would take several years for the twelve men on death row to be free. 

In 1948 the Dixiecrats, who used the Confederate battle flag as their banner, formed to oppose desegregation and Truman's efforts to establish anti-lynching laws. The opposition from Southern legislators including Arkansas' was so strong that the anti-lynching efforts were defeated.

Jim Crow laws themselves did not begin to lose their power until the 1950's as the quest for equitable education culminated in Brown v. the Board of Education. Although weakened, many aspects of Jim Crow continued legally until the Civil Rights Act was signed in1964. 

Dylann Roof's heinous act of domestic terrorism/hate crime/murder is the tangible legacy of the Confederacy. It's time for us as Southerners to face the truth, to remove the symbols of this legacy from tax supported public spaces. 

No, taking down the Confederate Blvd. sign from a predominately black neighborhood isn't going to fix our struggles with racism in Arkansas. But, you have to start somewhere, you can't treat a disease when you refuse to name the symptoms. 

Excerpts from the secession statements:

Georgia:
"The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. 

Mississippi:
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."

South Carolina:
"A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.'

Texas:
Texas was received [into the Union] as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States."

Heritage or Hate - Looks Like Hate

On June 17, 2015, nine Black people were murdered in Charleston, South Carolina by a white man as they sat at prayer inside the historic Emanuel AME Church. The next morning the American flag and the SC state flag flew at half-mast on the Capitol grounds while at the same time the most onerous symbol of the Civil War flew high atop its pole on the very same lawn. South Carolina Governor Haley and other legislators defended the flag’s placement, citing a law, the Heritage Act of 2000 as the reason that it could not be moved. This law requires a two-thirds vote by the legislative body for a joint resolution to move the flag in any way beyond stipulated intervals for replacement purposes. The Heritage Act also expressly dictates protective measures for this flag that include an iron fence and a padlock on the pole to keep the flag in place.

The man who committed these executions, Dylann Storm Roof is an avowed white supremacist. It is clear from his “manifesto” that he was committed to the violent resolution of what he believed to be the right of white people to regain dominion over, even to exterminate, Black people. He decided that igniting a “race war” would create the perfect storm that would allow for the dominance of white supremacists. Engaging in an act of domestic terrorism/hate crime/mass murder, he slaughtered nine innocent people as they prayed - targeted because they were Black. 

Numerous photos have emerged of the killer waving, exalting and idolizing a flag - the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, also known as the Confederate Flag. The very same flag that flew full mast on the SC Capitol grounds the day after the murders. This is a flag that continues to be strenuously defended and protected by many, overwhelmingly, white people who claim that it is a symbol of their heritage and Southern Pride. It is also a flag that is used as a symbol of white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-nazis, skinheads, white nationalists, etc. who actively embody the racist history of the flag’s legacy.   

This particular battle flag was designed by William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, who ironically enough, at one time served as the Mayor of Charleston. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives prior to South Carolina’s secession from the Union. Miles was an extremist on the issue of slavery and advocated for the continuation of the slave trade. His beliefs on slavery were so absolute that he  was known as a “fire-eater”. He believed that “liberty was an acquired privilege”, that some (white) men were born with the innate ability to earn liberty, while others, (non-white) were not. He vehemently rejected the idea of any sort of compromise on the issue of slavery and responded to all proposed attempts to restrict or end its practice with calls for Southern secession from the Union. 

William Mile’s design was initially created for consideration as the flag of the newly formed Confederacy, but it was rejected in favor of the Stars and Bars. This flag was flown in battle just once, at Manassas, Virginia (also known as the first battle of Bull Run) in 1861. A confusion in identifying the Confederate national flag from the Union’s led to Confederate forces mistakenly firing on one of their own brigades. After the battle General Pierre G.T. Beauregard of the Confederate Army of the Potomac and General Joseph E. Johnston of the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah determined that a more easily identifiable flag must be utilized to prevent further battlefield mishaps. General Beauregard consulted with his then aide-de-camp who happened to be William Porcher Miles. After reviewing Mile’s design Generals Beauregard and Johnston made the decision to utilize it for the field of battle. 

The flag was first presented in ceremonies to General Robert E. Lee’s newly reorganized  Army of Northern Virginia in Centerville and Manassas, Virginia. General Beauregard exhorted the troops to treat this new flag with honor and to never surrender it. From here this battle flag would continue to rise in popularity and become one of the most recognized flags of the Confederacy. 

In 1863 this battle flag would be incorporated at the behest of  William Miles into the second national flag of the Confederacy known as the Stainless Banner. His flag design was placed in the upper left hand corner on a field of bright white. The flag would become better known by its nickname, “a white man’s flag”. This flag would later be edited in 1865 because when not unfurled in the breeze it appeared to be one of truce or surrender. Major Arthur L. Rogers suggested that a large vertical red stripe be added to the end on the right side of the flag. Thus a third national flag known as the Bloodstained Banner was created.

In 1863 the Savannah Morning News published an editorial lauding the Stainless Banner aka the “white man’s flag”. William T. Thompson the paper’s editor stated, “As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven Ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.” 

In 1962 the South Carolina legislative body, all white, voted to place the original battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia atop the Capitol dome. Ostensively it was placed there in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War and the state’s role in the war. Others saw the flag’s placement as an act of defiance toward the heated struggle for Civil Rights by Black  Americans. 

In 1999, a large coalition led by the NAACP called for conventions, entertainers, vacationers, sporting events, etc.to boycott South Carolina. In 2000 over 50,000 people marched on the South Carolina Capitol calling for the flag’s removal. This resulted in a compromise during the 2000 legislative session that provided for the flag’s removal from the dome to a site on the Capitol grounds. This session also saw the passage of the Heritage Act as a means to further protect any future efforts to remove, relocate or rename any historically (Confederate) named street, park or other public space and symbols. And especially protected in this Act is the battle flag’s place on the Capitol grounds, providing specifics that include an iron fence and a padlock to protect its location. This same session also saw the establishment of an official Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. South Carolina was the last state in the country to set this observance. 

The Civil War has been heavily romanticized, its brutal origins glossed over and revised to make it more palatable. But at its roots, in the DNA of its marrow, lies these facts regarding the heritage of the Confederacy: On December 20, 1860 - South Carolina seceded from the Union. On April 12, 1861, within weeks of the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, an act of treasonous war against the United Sates of America was committed by Confederate forces at Charleston Harbor. Under the command of General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, Ft. Sumter was attacked, signaling the beginning of a bloody war that would last four years and claim a total of 620,000 lives. 

Absolutely. The war was about economics and state’s rights. Specifically the economic prosperity gained by the use of slave labor and the right of states to continue to engage in slavery and the slave trade. The heritage of the flag that flies on the South Carolina Capitol grounds, includes a history of white men violently ascertaining their superiority over Black people to hold them in captivity and forced servitude, a superiority that they defended through Biblical scripture. This heritage includes the kidnapping of an estimated 20 million Africans via the Atlantic Slave Trade. It is a heritage that includes the tightly packed and chained bodies of Black people in the filthy holds of ships to lie in their excrement for up to two months at a time. It is a heritage that stripped Black people of their clothing and dignity, setting them upon auction blocks to be poked and prodded like so much cattle. The heritage fought so valiantly for under this flag includes rape, torture, beatings, murder, and forced breeding to create new “stock”. It is a heritage that thought nothing of splitting up families as punishment or for profit. 

The heritage of this battle flag includes post-war atrocities as the South ardently sought to find new ways to maintain its dominance over the bodies of Black people. Jim Crow laws were used to disenfranchise Black people from access to voting, property ownership, education, housing, health care, amassing wealth, etc.

Convict leasing replaced slavery and became the basis for a penal labor system that wantonly incarcerated Black bodies in order to rent them for profit. The Ku Klux Klan, flying this flag, emerged as the violent enforcement arm of Jim Crow. The very first anti-terrorist laws enacted in this country were a direct response to the brutal actions of the Ku Klux Klan. 

This is the heritage that lay at the heart of countless acts of domestic terrorism as night riders burned homes and lynched Black people at will. Black communities were terrorized by violent white mob driven riots, New York City, Atlanta, Knoxville, Tulsa, Washington D.C., Chicago, Elaine, and E. St. Louis. Some towns such as Rosewood and Greenwood were completely burned to the ground. Thousands of Black people were murdered and injured, left homeless and penniless during these riots. 

The legacy of terror continued with the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, the Crisis at Central High in Little Rock, the assault on the bodies of Freedom Riders and those who sat at lunch counters, the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder by bombing of  four little girls - Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins in a church in Birmingham, the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi - James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the violence of Bloody Sunday during the march from Selma to Montgomery and the murder of Viola Liuzzo. 

All of the heritage of the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virgina - Dlyann Storm Roof embraced as his own. This was his banner when he decided to commit unspeakable violence on the bodies of nine Americans, because they were Black. 

There is no room for a defense of this flag’s continued placement on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. It is naught but lip service for the Governor and the legislative body to express sorrow and prayers, but refuse to call for the flag’s removal.  

It is time for South Carolina to own its bloody heritage that helped to form Dylann Storm Roof. Now is the time for an act of courage that refuses to embrace the misguided Confederate sentimentality and imagined supremacy that gnaws on the ancestral bones of slaves and their descendants. Now is the time to prove the depths of sorrow and the desire for healing and reconciliation. Removing the Battle Flag from the Capitol grounds is a good first step. 

Eclipse

SNOW

Snow

stretches smooth

quiet

like the silence

that wraps

this space

where hopes

once danced

upon countertops

Snow

where angels

lay with

wings wide

whispering of

tomorrows

never seen

halos erased

on icy breath

Snow

melting

like those

dreams

cold rivulets

of loss

storm drain bound

swirling

out to sea

Snow…

                                                                                             Randi M. Romo © March 2015

Cut to the Chase - Stone Me!

Dear Arkansas:

There is a movement afoot in our legislature to create laws, SB202 and HB1228 that are for the direct purpose of allowing discrimination against Arkansans of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender persuasion. One will ban cities from providing full civil rights protections to its residents. At the same time SB202 also selectively usurps the Arkansas established standards of Home Rule.

HB1228 will allow anyone to use their personal religious beliefs to refuse services to anyone who doesn't fit their religious code’s standards. Nothing slippery about that one. Given that this effort is rooted in the good Christian faith of some of our citizenry, then let’s just cut to the chase. Let’s not waste time and tax payer dollars on lawsuits; if you’re going to allow any aspect of the Bible to dictate civil law then let’s just get to it. Stoning. Public stoning to death for myself and the rest of Arkansas’ LGBT community.

Now then, where to hold such an event? How about at Verizon Arena? That ought to be big enough to hold all of the folks in Arkansas that think their religious opinions give them the right to dictate public law that impacts ALL Arkansans. It would be like a real coliseum event! So hurry up! Gather up your family, bring the kiddies and call all of your friends. Pack a picnic lunch.

Hey! I know! You could have a lottery, sell tickets to see who wins the right to hurl the first stone at my head! Here’s another great idea, you can take photographs of my dead body and make them into postcards. You can create a little micro-business selling them. Then use one of your postcards to write a note to your Aunt Betty and ask her to come for a visit. Tell her how beautiful Arkansas' parks, rivers and people are. And let her know that Arkansas has some of the best queer stoning events in the country! Oh wait! You can get more for the bang too! Let's get rid of those pesky stubborn sons, adulterers, those who take God's name in vain, etc. too!

Please. Let me know the date as soon as you can. I need to get my affairs in order and say good-bye to my mom and dad, my five brothers, my two daughters, my two grandchildren and all the rest of my relatives. I’d like to say farewell to all of my beloveds and all the good people of Arkansas that I have had the privilege of knowing.

Sincerely yours,

Randi M. Romo

Holidaze

The recent failure of the Arkansas Legislature to remove General Robert E. Lee from the day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was disheartening. Once again the specter of the South’s legacy of slavery and the disrespect of its Black residents was evident.

One of the fundamental reasons for the Civil War was more about economics, not humanitarian concerns. While the issue of the abolitionist movement was increasing at the time, the war itself was not dependent on anti-slavery as its justification. The real reason wasn't over concern for an enslaved people, it was in part because of the disadvantages between slave labor and paid labor.

By using slave labor, the South had a significant edge on production costs. Also, the trading in human flesh to provide for those utilizing human beings as farm equipment was in of itself a profitable business. Lee, while by accounts deemed an honorable man, was in fact in charge of a military force that sought to maintain the status quo for the South. This included fighting for the continued use of slaves to support the Southern economy. It meant fighting for the right to keep human beings in bondage, usually in horrific, inhumane living and working conditions. Their lives and family’s well-being dependent upon the whim of their masters. Rape, beatings, torture and lynching were a common occurrence committed by masters against their slaves. Children and parents were torn apart because family members were sold off or killed by their masters. Husbands powerless to protect or defend their wives from rape at the hands of the master, his friends and relatives. This is a part of what Lee fought to continue.

The war ended. General Lee lost, the Confederacy lost. However, an era of a new kind of slavery blossomed in the South as those who followed Lee contrived new ways to gain from the misery and the complete subjugation of Black people in the South. They planted their bitter fruit trees of Jim Crow laws that dictated the lives of Black Southerners. Available employment was poorly paid and workers endured abuse and mistreatment as a matter of course at the hands of White employers. A reliance by Southern Whites on prison labor for economic gain saw Black men and women incarcerated willfully and often on trumped up charges. These bitter trees also bore the strange fruit of Black bodies; men and women, lynched for the sport and hatred of their White neighbors.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an important part of the many who struggled for freedom from these terrible things. Many in the civil rights movement were beaten and some murdered to stop these efforts for freedom and equality. Celebrating Robert E. Lee on the same day as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a painful reminder to the descendants of those who endured the atrocities of slavery, Jim Crow and the continuance of inequitable treatment suffered today, that there is no true understanding nor compassion for what has happened to their people.

General Robert E. Lee although deemed an honorable man, bears the legacy of his active participation in leading an army whose mandate was to protect the established way of life in the South. This included the continuation of White people owning Black people and doing whatever they wanted to do with their bodies and their very lives. This is a real part of Lee's legacy. And those who seek to elevate and celebrate him cannot ignore, nor escape this most evident truth.

The Arkansas legislature is purported to represent ALL Arkansans. It is reprehensible and a disservice to that body and to this state to continue honoring General Lee on the same day as Dr. King. As a civil rights activist, Dr. King, often at his own peril, fought to free Black people from the legacy of Lee and the ensuing Jim Crow South. To continue to allow this to stand is an act of blatant disregard for the ugly truth of the history and pain that continues to be felt today by many Black people, in particular Southern Black people.

Change seems to come hard to Arkansas, especially changes such as these. But if we are to respect and value all of our residents then it is well past time to take General Robert E. Lee off of the day of remembrance and celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.