Tennessee Tea Party ‘Demands’ That References To Slavery Be Removed From History Textbooks
Tennessee Tea Party ‘Demands’ That References To Slavery Be Removed From History TextbooksBy Marie Diamond - ThinkProgress
Jan 23, 2012 at 11:00 am
Tea Partiers would prefer students didn't
learn George Washington owned slaves.
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In 2010, the conservatives who controlled the Texas Board of Education caused an uproar when they made radical changes to the history curriculum for the state’s 4.8 million public school students. The changes included referring to the country’s first black president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” and requiring students to “contrast” Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address with Abraham Lincoln’s philosophical views.
To whitewash one of the darkest practices in America history, conservatives proposed that textbooks refer to the slave trade as the “Atlantic triangular trade.” Now Tennessee Tea Party members are taking their efforts a step further and trying to eliminate references to slavery in American history textbooks. Salon reports that Tea Partiers who fetishize America’s founders are “demanding” that students not be taught that many of them owned slaves:
At a press conference, two dozen activists presented their proposals — I’m sorry, their “demands” — for the new state legislative session. Among them are sweeping changes to school materials that they probably have not actually read. <...>
Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”
Many of America’s first leaders, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings, and James Madison actually brought a slave with him to the White House when he became president.
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More: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/23/408974/tennessee-tea-party-demands-that-references-to-slavery-be-removed-from-history-textbooks/
= new reply since forum marked as read
They didn't intrude on the Indians? Man, my ancestors would have a thing or two to say about that, but what interest would White TPers have in reality? They're so caught up in their White guys as victims meme that nothing else matters.
Diane
Anishinaabe in MI
If this episode weren't so pathetic... THAT would be hilarious!
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President Andrew Jackson gave his full support to the removal of the Cherokees from their land. An armed force of 7,000 made up of militia, regular army, and volunteers under General Winfield Scott forced the remaining 15,000 Cherokees from their homes in the Great Smokey Mountains and removed them to stockades at the U.S. Indian Agency near Charleston, Tennessee. Their homes were burned and their property destroyed and plundered. Farms belonging to the Cherokees for generations were won by white settlers in a lottery.
The march of 1,000 miles began in the winter of 1838. Carrying only a few light blankets and wearing scant clothing with daily rations of only salt pork and corn meal, many sickened and died along the way. Medical care was nearly non-existent. Only the very old, sick, and small children could be carried in wagons or ride on horseback. Over 8,000 were on foot, most without shoes or moccasins. They crossed Tennessee and Kentucky, about the 3rd of December, 1838, they arrived in Southern Illinois at Golconda.
To reach Golconda from Kentucky, the Cherokee had to cross the Ohio River. They were forced to pay $1 a head for a ferry passage on Berry's Ferry operating out of Golconda. This was rather exorbitant considering it normally cost only 12 and half cents for a Conestoga wagon and all you could carry. Berry's Ferry made over $10,000 that winter out of the pockets of the starving Cherokees. They were not allowed passage until the ferry had serviced all others wishing to cross and were forced to take shelter under Mantle Rock, a shelter bluff on the Kentucky side, until Berry had nothing better to do. Many died huddled together at Mantle Rock waiting to cross.
Many contagious diseases spread among the tribe during their journey -- cholera, whooping cough, and small pox. The Cherokee were given used blankets from a hospital in Tennessee where an epidemic of small pox had broken out. Because of the diseases, the Indians were not allowed to go into any towns or villages along the way; many times this meant traveling much farther to go around them. However, one family in Golconda had compassion on them and shared their pumpkin crop with the Cherokee.
While staying near Golconda, several Cherokee were murdered by locals. The killers filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government through the courthouse in Vienna, suing the government for $35 a head to bury the murdered Cherokee. They lost their suit and the bodies were thrown in shallow, unmarked graves near Brownfield where a monument to the Trail of Tears now stands.
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Link: http://www.egyptianaaa.org/SI-Trail-of-Tears.htm
Additional information can be obtained from the Trail of Tears State Park in Cape Girardeau County, MO. http://mostateparks.com/park/trail-tears-state-park
If you haven't read this book, you should.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee
He opens noting that the explorer Christopher Columbus named the Native Americans Indios because of his search for the East Indies. Given the many differing dialects and languages of succeeding European colonists, the term in English became Indians. Life as known to the indigenous people of the Americas would never be the same after Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492.
Brown describes different tribes of Native Americans and their relations to the US federal government during the years 1860-1890. He begins with the Navajo, the Apache, and the other tribes of the American Southwest who were displaced as California and the surrounding areas were colonized by European Americans. Brown chronicles the changing and sometimes conflicting attitudes both of US authorities, such as General Custer, and Indian chiefs, particularly Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. He describes the Indian chiefs' attempts to save their peoples, by peace, war, or retreat.
The later part of the book focuses primarily on the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes of the North American Plains. They were among the last to be moved on to Indian reservations. It culminates with the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the deaths of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and the US Army's killing of mostly unarmed Sioux at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, an event generally considered to mark the end of the Indian Wars.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee
I thought that that was where I read about The Trail Of Tears... Maybe not.
No offense intended.
Maybe it is time to take Tennessee out of the history books??
That's what they called it when I learned history in Virginia in the early 1970's.
Our teacher referred to the South as "us" and the North as "them.'
Also, the war was about "states' rights." Slavery really had nothing to do with it at all.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
