The Southern Legal Resource Center eU P D A T E
SLRC TO RINGGOLD CITY COUNCIL: PUT THE BATTLE FLAG BACK
RINGGOLD, GA --The SLRC has submitted a written request to the City Council of Ringgold, Georgia, to restore to its rightful place a Confederate Battle Flag that was removed from the Ringgold Depot historic site nearly three years ago.
In 2005 the City of Ringgold completed restoration work at the depot and added a brick walkway, with some bricks bearing the names of about 750 Confederate soldiers who embarked from the station to fight in various theaters of the war. The local SCV camp purchased and contributed a Confederate fieldpiece as a centerpiece for the memorial area. Four flags, including the Confederate Battle Flag, were later installed on poles at the site.
Soon after the flags were put in place, however, local representatives of the NAACP told the Council that they objected to the Battle Flag’s presence at the depot, and in March of that year the Council voted to remove it and to substitute a replica of the Hardee-pattern unit flag – a white oval on a white-framed dark blue field – on the theory that the Hardee flag would have been carried by most of the units involved in the November 27, 1863, Battle of Ringgold Gap. SCV members and other citizens criticized the council’s move on grounds that the Hardee flag was not representative of all the soldiers who passed through the Depot, and that Council had in fact interfered with a public monument by removing the Battle Flag.
In a detailed three-page letter sent to each member of the city council, SLRC Executive Director Roger McCredie cited primary sources which proved that flags other than the Hardee flag were in fact carried into action at the Ringgold Gap battle. However, the issue of what flags were carried in that action is a moot point anyway, McCredie’s letter said, since the intent of the Depot memorial was to honor all Confederates who entrained there for service across the South and the Battle Flag was the appropriate flag to display in that context. “The Confederate Battle Flag is the most suitable flag for the display because it is immediately recognizable, it represents all Confederate soldiers and it was the choice of the veterans themselves,” McCredie’s letter stated. “Your action [in restoring the flag] will benefit your fellow Southerners who struggle daily to preserve the history, culture and symbols of this region.”
McCredie also noted that color prints of the depot as it appeared in 2005 with the Battle Flag in place are currently on display in several public buildings in Ringgold including the county administration building, the health department and the public library.
The TAG & Middle Georgia Chapters
The New Confederate Partisans
Ringgold FLAG RALLY!
We will honour our heroes with their Flag!
Apr. 26 2008
Ringgold Ga. Details HERE
SLRC plans to revive national origin issue
The SLRC is preparing to revive the issue of Southerners as a legitimate ethnic group whose culture is entitled to protection under law, and to seek national and international recognition of that status.
Executive Director Roger McCredie confirmed that next month’s issue of the SLRC newsletter will contain an updated hard copy version of the Confederate-Southern American National Origin Affidavit currently available on the SLRC website, and that the website version will also be redrafted to make it more readable and easier to complete. “We urge all loyal Southerners to complete and send us a copy of this affidavit,” McCredie said. In fact, we would urge everybody who signs one to make additional copies and circulate them.”
“Submitting this form in no way compromises anybody’s patriotism or standing as a good American,” SLRC Chief Trial Counsel Kirk Lyons said. “All a person is doing by filling out this form is saying, ‘I am a Confederate-Southern American, one of a people who share common cultural traits and beliefs, and entitled to be recognized and protected as such,’ ” Lyons said.
PLAYING TO WIN
Editorial/Roger McCredie
The Northern historian Bruce Catton, describing the prolonged intense fighting at the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania, said, “There was no victory in all of this, and no defeat. There was only fighting, as if that had become an end in itself.” Sometimes I think that we present-day Southerners shoot ourselves in the foot by treating the struggle to preserve our heritage and culture as though it, too, were an end in itself, with no possibility of victory on the other side of it.
God knows this is understandable. For a generation now, as part of their cultural manifest destiny, the forces that shape mainstream opinion and policy in America have made it their business to wage war on the South’s symbols, history, language, customs and attitudes. Anti-Southernism in America has become fully institutionalized. There is hardly a Southerner who has not in some way been directly and personally affected by it, or will be; and those Southerners who object, or who attempt to appeal to reason or fairness, are either ignored or denounced as ignorant, malevolent racists (“racism” having replaced “communism” as the national hobgoblin). The abuses and injuries, the insults and lies fall so thick and fast that we experience overload; we fight as best we can, and bravely enough, but with a sort of numb desperation.
There is an old saying that you can’t solve a problem from the level of the problem, and the first rule of success in going into any adversarial action is to have a clear answer to the question, “Why am I fighting? What, at the end of the day, do I want out of all this?” Within what is known as the Southern Movement, there is a whole spectrum of answers to that, ranging from Southern independence to cultural recognition to simple respect and fair treatment. They are all valid answers, by the way, but for them to be translated into success, we have to keep asking them of ourselves, and then keep answering. It’s amazing how, as we go through that exercise, the next thing we need to do becomes clear. And the smoke lifts for a moment and we truly see what the field will look like when the battle is over and we have won.
O wise men, riddle me this:
What if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? And if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart,
The noble house of my thought?
-- Padriag Pearse
If you have a stake in Southern heritage and culture, and are looking for a meaningful way to honor and protect them, please give generously to the Southern Legal Resource Center. With your help we can continue our aggressive efforts to secure the rights of all Southerners to express pride in their regional identity without fear of ridicule or reprisal, as should be the case for all Americans.
The Southern Legal Resource Center is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, and contributions to it are fully tax deductible. Credit card and PayPal donations may be made at our website by clicking on “How You Can Help.” Checks payable to the Southern Legal Resource Center should be mailed to P.O. Box 1235, Black Mountain, NC 28711. “Thumbs Up for Dixie” stickers are available for SLRC and local heritage fundraising projects. Contact the SLRC for details at (828) 669-5189 or mim@slrc-csa.org.
RINGGOLD, GA --The SLRC has submitted a written request to the City Council of Ringgold, Georgia, to restore to its rightful place a Confederate Battle Flag that was removed from the Ringgold Depot historic site nearly three years ago.
In 2005 the City of Ringgold completed restoration work at the depot and added a brick walkway, with some bricks bearing the names of about 750 Confederate soldiers who embarked from the station to fight in various theaters of the war. The local SCV camp purchased and contributed a Confederate fieldpiece as a centerpiece for the memorial area. Four flags, including the Confederate Battle Flag, were later installed on poles at the site.
Soon after the flags were put in place, however, local representatives of the NAACP told the Council that they objected to the Battle Flag’s presence at the depot, and in March of that year the Council voted to remove it and to substitute a replica of the Hardee-pattern unit flag – a white oval on a white-framed dark blue field – on the theory that the Hardee flag would have been carried by most of the units involved in the November 27, 1863, Battle of Ringgold Gap. SCV members and other citizens criticized the council’s move on grounds that the Hardee flag was not representative of all the soldiers who passed through the Depot, and that Council had in fact interfered with a public monument by removing the Battle Flag.
In a detailed three-page letter sent to each member of the city council, SLRC Executive Director Roger McCredie cited primary sources which proved that flags other than the Hardee flag were in fact carried into action at the Ringgold Gap battle. However, the issue of what flags were carried in that action is a moot point anyway, McCredie’s letter said, since the intent of the Depot memorial was to honor all Confederates who entrained there for service across the South and the Battle Flag was the appropriate flag to display in that context. “The Confederate Battle Flag is the most suitable flag for the display because it is immediately recognizable, it represents all Confederate soldiers and it was the choice of the veterans themselves,” McCredie’s letter stated. “Your action [in restoring the flag] will benefit your fellow Southerners who struggle daily to preserve the history, culture and symbols of this region.”
McCredie also noted that color prints of the depot as it appeared in 2005 with the Battle Flag in place are currently on display in several public buildings in Ringgold including the county administration building, the health department and the public library.
The New Confederate Partisans
Ringgold FLAG RALLY!
We will honour our heroes with their Flag!
Apr. 26 2008
Ringgold Ga. Details HERE
SLRC plans to revive national origin issue
The SLRC is preparing to revive the issue of Southerners as a legitimate ethnic group whose culture is entitled to protection under law, and to seek national and international recognition of that status.
Executive Director Roger McCredie confirmed that next month’s issue of the SLRC newsletter will contain an updated hard copy version of the Confederate-Southern American National Origin Affidavit currently available on the SLRC website, and that the website version will also be redrafted to make it more readable and easier to complete. “We urge all loyal Southerners to complete and send us a copy of this affidavit,” McCredie said. In fact, we would urge everybody who signs one to make additional copies and circulate them.”
“Submitting this form in no way compromises anybody’s patriotism or standing as a good American,” SLRC Chief Trial Counsel Kirk Lyons said. “All a person is doing by filling out this form is saying, ‘I am a Confederate-Southern American, one of a people who share common cultural traits and beliefs, and entitled to be recognized and protected as such,’ ” Lyons said.
PLAYING TO WIN
Editorial/Roger McCredie
The Northern historian Bruce Catton, describing the prolonged intense fighting at the Mule Shoe salient at Spotsylvania, said, “There was no victory in all of this, and no defeat. There was only fighting, as if that had become an end in itself.” Sometimes I think that we present-day Southerners shoot ourselves in the foot by treating the struggle to preserve our heritage and culture as though it, too, were an end in itself, with no possibility of victory on the other side of it.
God knows this is understandable. For a generation now, as part of their cultural manifest destiny, the forces that shape mainstream opinion and policy in America have made it their business to wage war on the South’s symbols, history, language, customs and attitudes. Anti-Southernism in America has become fully institutionalized. There is hardly a Southerner who has not in some way been directly and personally affected by it, or will be; and those Southerners who object, or who attempt to appeal to reason or fairness, are either ignored or denounced as ignorant, malevolent racists (“racism” having replaced “communism” as the national hobgoblin). The abuses and injuries, the insults and lies fall so thick and fast that we experience overload; we fight as best we can, and bravely enough, but with a sort of numb desperation.
There is an old saying that you can’t solve a problem from the level of the problem, and the first rule of success in going into any adversarial action is to have a clear answer to the question, “Why am I fighting? What, at the end of the day, do I want out of all this?” Within what is known as the Southern Movement, there is a whole spectrum of answers to that, ranging from Southern independence to cultural recognition to simple respect and fair treatment. They are all valid answers, by the way, but for them to be translated into success, we have to keep asking them of ourselves, and then keep answering. It’s amazing how, as we go through that exercise, the next thing we need to do becomes clear. And the smoke lifts for a moment and we truly see what the field will look like when the battle is over and we have won.
O wise men, riddle me this:
What if the dream come true?
What if the dream come true? And if millions unborn shall dwell
In the house that I shaped in my heart,
The noble house of my thought?
-- Padriag Pearse
If you have a stake in Southern heritage and culture, and are looking for a meaningful way to honor and protect them, please give generously to the Southern Legal Resource Center. With your help we can continue our aggressive efforts to secure the rights of all Southerners to express pride in their regional identity without fear of ridicule or reprisal, as should be the case for all Americans.
The Southern Legal Resource Center is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization, and contributions to it are fully tax deductible. Credit card and PayPal donations may be made at our website by clicking on “How You Can Help.” Checks payable to the Southern Legal Resource Center should be mailed to P.O. Box 1235, Black Mountain, NC 28711. “Thumbs Up for Dixie” stickers are available for SLRC and local heritage fundraising projects. Contact the SLRC for details at (828) 669-5189 or mim@slrc-csa.org.
posted by Chuck Demastus at
9:53 PM
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