Texas Distorts Its Past and That of Sam Houston To Defend Confederate Monuments

[BarryLaverty]

As I have said before, Sam Houston was not for Texas seceding. He would not be for the preservation of Confederate monuments is a logical assumption. And, he would danged sure not be for TEXIT. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-distorts-past-sam-houstons-133040459.html

Texas distorts its past – and Sam Houston's legacy – to defend Confederate monuments

 

 

Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Professor of History, Sam Houston State University, Kristin Henze, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State University, Aaron David Hyams, Visiting Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State University, and Zachary Montz, Lecturer, History Department, Sam Houston State University

Thu, March 11, 2021, 7:30 AM

 

 

 

Huntsville reveres hometown hero Sam Houston. And he did not revere the Confederacy. Jimmy Henderson/flickr, CC BY-SA

At least 160 Confederate symbols were removed from public spaces across the United States in 2020, according to the the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, has removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from the Richmond Statehouse and is trying to take down others seen as offensive by an increasing numbers of Americans, including those whose ancestors were enslaved.

Texas has largely declined to participate in this nationwide reckoning with the symbols of the Old South. Instead, local officials are doubling down on their Confederate monuments.

Republican State Sen. Brandon Creighton, who represents the city of Conroe, near Houston, says he will file a bill this legislative session to protect historical monuments from efforts to remove them.

Meanwhile, officials in rural Walker County, Texas, voted unanimously in December to keep a marker to “Confederate Patriots” on the county courthouse lawn in Huntsville. The vote followed an eight-month citizen campaign calling for the removal of the monument, which was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1956.

- ADVERTISEMENT -

Walker County Commissioners explained their Dec. 21 decision only by saying that the monument “does not belong to us,” suggesting it is a piece of local history.

Yet Walker County is hundreds of miles from any major Civil War battlefield. And the county’s most famous resident, Sam Houston, a Texas hero, ardently opposed the Confederacy.

So rejecting the Confederacy is Texas history, too.

 

Crowd of young people stands by Walker County's Confederate monument with signs saying, 'The South lost the war, get over it!'

A proud Southerner who opposed secession

Sam Houston was the most important political figure in Texas before the Civil War. The modern city of Houston is named for him, as is the university in Huntsville, Texas, where we teach American history.

Born in Virginia, Houston moved to the Mexican state of Texas in 1832. A veteran of the War of 1812, Houston was soon appointed commander of the Texas Army and helped secure Texas’ independence at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto. He went on to serve two nonconsecutive terms as president of the independent Republic of Texas.

Later, Houston was the state’s Democratic governor when secession became a serious subject of discussion in the South.

In 1860, following Abraham Lincoln’s election, white leaders in Huntsville wrote to Houston seeking his advice. Houston counseled them in a letter written on Nov. 14, 1860, to remain vigilant in their defense of American constitutional values “when the country is agitated and revolution threatened.” He urged the group not to get “carried away by the impulse of the moment.”

 

Faded, sepia-toned Texas flag

There were natural bonds between Houston and Southern secessionists: All were white male slave owners who openly endorsed white supremacy. But Houston saw slavery as a necessary evil, not a patriotic cause.

“It is necessity that produces slavery,” he said in 1855, and “it is convenience, it is profit, that creates slavery.”

As a senator in 1854, he had voted against the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories and was condemned throughout the South for his principled stand.

Sam Houston was no abolitionist, however. He owned more than a dozen enslaved people and profited from enslaved labor throughout his life. Unlike much of America’s Southern gentry, though, Houston was not willing to shed blood to expand slavery.

When Texas legislators met in 1861 to consider seceding from the United States, Houston made clear his opposition to the move. But Texas secessionists were a stronger force. When Houston refused to take an oath to the Confederacy on March 16, 1861, he was removed from the governor’s office.

Booed by crowds and driven from state politics, Houston settled into a self-imposed exile in Huntsville. He watched in dismay as Texas joined the Confederacy. He died two years later, a lonesome and broken man.

A contorted view of Texas history

As scholars who focus on race and class in Texas, we have studied the state’s history and have been led to speak out against Huntsville’s Confederate monument.

As we wrote last year in a statement published in the local newspaper, the Huntsville Item, the courthouse marker obscures and misrepresents local history. It is an insult to Houston’s refusal to pledge allegiance to the Confederacy and ignores the fact that enslaved African Americans made up most of Walker County’s population during the Civil War.

It is, in so many words, an ahistorical monument.

Yet Huntsville – population 40,000 – glorifies Houston as a military and political hero. His former home is surrounded by a modern museum dedicated to him. And Interstate 45, which runs from Houston to Dallas, features a 67-foot statue known as “Big Sam” advertising Huntsville to travelers.

 

Old white wooden building with simple architecture

How can modern Huntsvillians – like local officials across Texas – both revere this anti-Confederate leader and pledge their support for Confederate symbols?

The answer lies in the “Lost Cause,” a tenacious Southern myth that portrays slavery as benign and the Confederacy as noble. This is the preferred version of Texas history promoted by the state’s conservative leadership, the version that appears in Texas schools’ textbooks.

 

A giant white marble statue of a man with a cane, highway in the foreground

By the 1950s, when the Huntsville chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected the courthouse monument, the group had been pushing the Lost Cause narrative for over half a century.

Mae Wynne McFarland, a native Huntsvillian and 1941 president of the Texas Daughters of the Confederacy, characterized the “War Between the States” as a conflict “fought for exactly the same principles which inspired the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Texas Revolution.”

Houston fought in two of those three battles. His repeated public statements show, however, that he did not believe the Confederacy’s effort in the Civil War aimed at the “same principles” as the War of 1812 or the Texas Revolution.

Conservative white Texans have long tried to knit Sam Houston into their Lost Cause narrative. But biographers and students of history have always been there to correct them.

[BoyzNdaHood]

Bleep the confederate losers.... 

[RETIREDFAN1]

We all KNOW Sam wasn't for secession.....ww learned it by paying attention in 7th grade Texas History class......

[DaveTV1]

They're putting words in to Sam Houston's mouth, because we will never know how he would have felt about monuments to the southern soldiers that gave their lives for their states and the Confederacy.  Most monuments I see are for dead people, it's only as a reminder of what happened in the past.  

[mellon]

No one living today has ever owned any slaves..................GET OVER IT!!

[BarryLaverty]

15 minutes ago, mellon said:

No one living today has ever owned any slaves..................GET OVER IT!!

What? 

[DB2point0]

I think its funny how people today act as experts on the minds of people from 1830’s.  Biographers today are telling us that certain people were actually different than what history has told for decades and centuries.  

[Youngcoach123]

7 hours ago, DB2point0 said:

I think its funny how people today act as experts on the minds of people from 1830’s.  Biographers today are telling us that certain people were actually different than what history has told for decades and centuries.  

It’s the lefts attempt to re write history. 

[DB2point0]

Just now, Youngcoach123 said:

It’s the lefts attempt to re write history. 

Exactly

[DAWG91]

[Monte1076]

1 hour ago, Youngcoach123 said:

It’s the lefts attempt to re write history. 

Like those nutters in California who want to re-name all of the Abraham Lincoln schools because they think he didn't demonstrate that black lives matter. I'm serious. Look it up.

[Monte1076]

1 hour ago, Youngcoach123 said:

It’s the lefts attempt to re write history. 

Like those nutters in California who want to re-name all of the Abraham Lincoln schools because they think he didn't demonstrate that black lives matter. I'm serious. Look it up.

[BarryLaverty]

2 hours ago, Youngcoach123 said:

It’s the lefts attempt to re write history. 

How so? Can you be specific? 

[Youngcoach123]

38 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

How so? Can you be specific? 

In the current topic

When you give a modern context to a historical event, that is a factual error. 

[DAWG91]

1 hour ago, Monte1076 said:

Like those nutters in California who want to re-name all of the Abraham Lincoln schools because they think he didn't demonstrate that black lives matter. I'm serious. Look it up.

We've heard the same thing from certain folks on here as well.

[BarryLaverty]

2 minutes ago, Youngcoach123 said:

In the current topic

When you give a modern context to a historical event, that is a factual error. 

As this was from historians who spelled out very clearly what Sam Houston's views were and the consequence for him, how is that modern context? Why can't their conclusion be seen as accurate that Sam wouldn't be for keeping Confederate monuments up? He didn't support Texas seceding. 

[Youngcoach123]

Just now, BarryLaverty said:

As this was from historians who spelled out very clearly what Sam Houston's views were and the consequence for him, how is that modern context? What can't their conclusion be seen as accurate that Sam wouldn't be for keeping Confederate monuments up? He didn't support Texas seceding. 

At the current time!! Not now. That’s how your putting a modern context on it DA.  His thoughts on current situations of Texas then cannot be drawn to conclusion of current events. When you draw a conclusion to modern times you apply modern context. Pull your head out of it Barry

[BarryLaverty]

2 minutes ago, Youngcoach123 said:

At the current time!! Not now. That’s how your putting a modern context on it DA.  His thoughts on current situations of Texas then cannot be drawn to conclusion of current events. When you draw a conclusion to modern times you apply modern context. Pull your head out of it Barry

That's just head in the sand dumb to assume that no inference can be made, especially when people just love to interpret what the Founding Fathers were thinking all the time to justify modern events. Don't be a hypocrite. 

[Youngcoach123]

9 minutes ago, BarryLaverty said:

That's just head in the sand dumb to assume that no inference can be made, especially when people just love to interpret what the Founding Fathers were thinking all the time to justify modern events. Don't be a hypocrite. 

The founding fathers wrote in detail what they were thinking. It’s not an assumption. (Especially on guns) 

I like how you gloss over the fact you didn’t get how they were putting a modern context to Sam Houston. No inference can be made. Times are different and he didn’t write about hypotheticals. 

[BoyzNdaHood]

3 hours ago, DAWG91 said:

If this is the case why so many ppl get offended when folks don't stand or cross heart for pledge? 

[Olduy]

6 hours ago, DAWG91 said:

No!

[Olduy]

4 hours ago, BarryLaverty said:

That's just head in the sand dumb to assume that no inference can be made, especially when people just love to interpret what the Founding Fathers were thinking all the time to justify modern events. Don't be a hypocrite. 

Liberals always assume they can infer what people are thinking you know about azz outa u me don’t you?

[osup116]

In reference of #METOO your logic is we remove every Statue and street sign of MLK - correct?

•  Email
•  Twitter346
•  Facebook4.2k
•  LinkedIn
•  Print

David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., has unearthed information that may forever change King’s legacy.

In an 8,000-word article published in the British periodical Standpoint Magazine on May 30, Garrow details the contents of FBI memos he discovered after spending weeks sifting through more than 54,000 documents located on the National Archive’s website. Initially sealed by court order until 2027, the documents ended up being made available in recent months through the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The most damaging memos describe King witnessing a rape in a hotel room. Instead of stopping it, handwritten notes in the file say he encouraged the attacker to continue.

King was once thought of as a saint beyond reproach. After his death, it eventually emerged that he was a womanizer.

We believe good journalism is good for democracy and necessary for it.

Learn more

If these FBI memos are accurate – and I have good reason to believe they are – we now have to ask the unthinkable: Was King an abuser? And what might this mean for his legacy?

Other outlets balk

The FBI files contained some other notable information.

Garrow writes that King may have fathered a daughter with Dolores Evans, a girlfriend of his who is still alive and living in Los Angeles. The memos also detail the closeness of his relationship with Dorothy Cotton, a longtime associate of King’s in Atlanta and director of his organization’s Citizen Education Program. It appears that the two were romantically involved.

Many of these transcripts were based on audiotapes that are still sealed under a court order.

Garrow had taken his findings to other outlets, but each decided against publishing them. The Guardian initially agreed to take the story, edited the piece, paid Garrow for his work and then decided the story was too risky to run. Editors at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said they didn’t want to run the piece because they couldn’t listen to the actual recordings the documents were based on. Some historians have questioned Garrow’s choice to publish the content of the memos and transcripts without listening to the recordings, and have pointed out that the FBI had spent years trying to undermine King.

However, I’ve gotten to know Garrow and his work over the last 11 years while conducting my own extensive research into King’s use of Langston Hughes’ poetry. Garrow has the same reputation among historians as Bob Woodward has among journalists – that is to say, I have no reason to doubt Garrow’s intentions or the accuracy of his article.

King’s sexual exploits long known

Soon after King’s death, several members of his inner circle, including Ralph Abernathy, started publicly discussing King’s philandering.

At the time, many justified his behavior by saying it was no different from the biblical David writing his psalms by day, only to be relieved at night by his concubines. Others pursued a line of defense extended to John F. Kennedy: What someone does in their own time isn’t the public’s business.

Garrow had outlined several of King’s marital infelicities in his 1986 biography of King. But he often spared the names of the women involved to protect their identities. Finally, in 2010, Kentucky State Sen. Georgia Davis Powers recounted her intimate relationship with King in her book “I Shared the Dream.”

But what has just emerged takes things to a whole new level: It now seems that King failed to stop a rape.

Memos detail a rape

During FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure, the agency greatly expanded the scope of its surveillance activities – often at the behest of sitting presidents. While Harry Truman worried the FBI was becoming a “citizen spy system,” presidents like Lyndon B. Johnson eagerly gave Hoover permission to gather information on political enemies.

Starting in late 1963 and continuing until his death, the FBI had been tracking King’s every move. FBI surveillance of King began with the goal of uncovering the relationship of King and his closest advisers, like Stanley Levison, with communists. But over time, the FBI started to fixate on King’s sexual exploits. In an era of lenient surveillance laws, J. Edgar Hoover was able to gain unmitigated access into King’s personal life.

The memos show that agents knew that King and a group including Baltimore Pastor Logan Kearse were going to be staying at the Willard Hotel in January 1964 days before he ever arrived.

By bugging the room, they were able to listen in on King and at least 11 others participated in what the FBI memos describe as “an orgy” on Jan. 6, 1964.

The microphones also picked up activities from the night before, when Kearse, who died in 1991, allegedly sexually assaulted one of his parishioners. According to the memos, King was in the room. The handwritten note indicates that King didn’t just observe the assault – he laughed.

Worse, instead of trying to stop the incident, the memos say King apparently offered advice to the perpetrator, encouraging the abuse.

What happens next?

The information contained in the memos won’t be confirmed until 2027. That’s when the FBI’s full audiotapes, photographs and film footage of King will be unsealed per a 1977 court order.

Some might doubt the FBI’s trustworthiness given the agency’s historic treatment of black activists. But as someone who has researched similar files, I believe Garrow’s experienced approach parses each of these acts with absolute precision. As Garrow explains in his article:

“Without question [the agents] had both the microphone-transmitted tape-recording and a subsequent full transcript at hand while they were annotating their existing typescript; in 1977 Justice Department investigators would publicly attest to how their own review of both the tapes and the transcripts showed them to be genuine and accurate. Throughout the 1960s, when no precedent for the public release of FBI documents existed or was even anticipated, [the agents] could not have imagined [their] jottings would ever see the light of day.”

It’s natural to want to defend King – to say, “let’s wait and see.”

Others might try to argue that abuse precedes abuse, and that the long legacy of slavery still informed the actions of these revered black clergy who subconsciously became like their oppressors. This legacy, of course, often included white men raping black women and sometimes disowning their children.

 

Will statues come down? Or will they remain, giving fodder to those who defend Confederate memorials? Susan Montgomery/Shutterstock.com

But I don’t think any filter of rationalization can soften this portrait of King. I’m not prepared to wait eight years, and I’ve halted my two scholarly projects about King.

I’ve also started thinking about what happens next.

What will the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations look like? Will other details emerge? Will more women come forward? Will community centers, schools and streets need to be renamed? Will statues come down, or will they remain – and give fodder to those who justify keeping Confederate monuments?

King espoused nonviolence. If these memos are true, such a stance feels hypocritical.

The narrative has just changed. And if scholarship and true biographical research matters at all, one thing is clear: These FBI memos may have forever damaged King’s legacy.

 

[DAWG91]

3 hours ago, JETT said:

If this is the case why so many ppl get offended when folks don't stand or cross heart for pledge? 

It's about respecting those who gave the ultimate sacrifice defending the flag.  Those who are disrespecting the flag are either marxist agitators or useful idiots.

[BoyzNdaHood]

13 minutes ago, DAWG91 said:

It's about respecting those who gave the ultimate sacrifice defending the flag.  Those who are disrespecting the flag are either marxist agitators or useful idiots.

Once we secede (your theory) won't be no pledge