The Past Isn T Dead; Itsn T Even Past

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“The Past Isn’t Dead; Itsn’t Even Past”

Southern History in the News, January-April 2002

History has been described as the “search for a useable past.” How have people been making use of Southern history while we’ve been studying it these past four month?The following items (edited for length) appeared in the Washington Post during the past semester.

JANUARY

This first article speaks to the historic gains of the Republican party in Virginia General Assembly over the past twenty-five years. In 1975, the Democrats had an overwhelming 83-17 majority in the House, a 35-5 advantage in the Senate. Today, Republicans control both the House and the Senate, a remarkable shift that outgoing Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore discussed in his farewell address to the General Assembly in January.

January 9, 2002

The Washington Post

Gilmore Offers an Upbeat Assessment; Governor Cites Gains By GOP, Car-Tax Cut
Gov. James S. Gilmore III (R) said farewell tonight to a General Assembly that gained a record number of Republicans on his watch but must now repair a state budget that plunged into a $ 1.3 billion hole during his last year in office.
In his 45-minute speech, Gilmore offered a robust defense of his four years, saying he had prepared the Old Dominion for the opportunities and perils of the 21st century.

The 100-seat House chamber was a fitting venue for Gilmore's valedictory, for it was in those legislative races that Republicans scored their most significant gains, growing from 49 members four years ago to the record 64 who were sworn in today after their elections two months ago.
Gilmore said toppling once-mighty Democrats from legislative power and helping create a climate for a string of statewide victories constituted his singular achievement, greater even than the car-tax relief program that he rode into office in 1997.
"The lasting legacy of this administration will not be a single policy or program, but the new life that we have breathed into our democracy," Gilmore said to applause from his mostly Republican audience. "We have replaced the single-party system with a marketplace of ideas. . . . Virginiawill never again be mocked as a 'political museum piece.' "

NOTE: Gilmore was referring to a 1949 study of Southern Politics in which political scientist V.O. Key described Virginia as a “political museum piece,” with all the trappings of democracy but none of the substance. Voter turnout was so small in that era that the Byrd organization had to win support from only 5 to 7 percent of the adult population to nominate its candidate for governor in the Democratic primary. In the one-party “Solid South” of that day, victory in the Democratic primary was tantamount to victory in the general election.

This next item suggests that Virginia – like other states throughout the South -- is still haunted by ghosts of the Confederacy and Jim Crow era. As the article points out, political controversies over symbols of the Confederate past reveal enduring tensions beneath a veneer of racial harmony.

January 17, 2002

The Washington Post

Black Caucus Speechless at Va. Flag Ode; Members Say Salute A Reminder of Past Racism
Black members of Virginia's House of Delegates are protesting the chamber's decision to begin each day's session by reciting a 30-word salute to the Virginia flag, a tribute they say is an unwelcome reminder of the massive resistance to desegregation in the South.
Members of the black caucus, who last week voted unanimously with the rest of the House to recite the salute, now say they were unaware of its history: It was written by a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and adopted by the General Assembly as the state's official flag salute in 1954 -- the year a U.S. Supreme Court decision ordered public schools to desegregate.
"When you salute the flag, it's an affirmation," said Del. Dwight Clinton Jones (D-Richmond). "I don't want to affirm a time when Virginia was exclusive and not inclusive. I feel like I'm affirming the past and the mood of the state at the time."

The dispute over the salute is not the only reminder of Virginia's historic struggles with racial issues.
Former lieutenant governor John H. Hager (R), the new assistant to the governor for emergency preparedness, today canceled the keynote speech he was scheduled to deliver Friday at an event honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. His decision to withdraw came after criticism of Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) from black legislators and others who said he was undermining his inaugural message of unity by allowing Hager to deliver the speech.
Former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder (D), the nation's first elected black governor, said the disputes over Hager's speech and the salute reflected poorly on the state's political leadership.
"It's sending a message that really doesn't describe Virginia -- that's the problem with it," Wilder said.
The state's leaders have struggled for years to maintain racial harmony, clashing on the wording of the state song, the image of the Confederate flag on license plates, the creation of a memorial to black tennis great Arthur Ashe and celebration of the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Two years ago, the legislature agreed to separate the holiday honoring Lee and Jackson from that honoring King.
Lawmaking in Virginia "takes place in a city that has battled regularly over these symbols," said Robert D. Holsworth, a political science professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "They are typically related to the deeper values that people hold and talk about."
In Virginia, the state's flag has once again forced the 100 members of the House of Delegates to confront the race issue.
Del. Lionell Spruill Sr. (D-Chesapeake) is one of several members who has stopped reciting the salute when the House convenes at noon. This week, he stood silently, his lips clamped shut, as his colleagues covered their hearts with their hands and read the salute.
"Don't keep bringing this stuff from the past," Spruill said. "Last time was the Confederate flag on the license plates. Don't keep rubbing it in. If you let this slide by, it will be something else."
But other delegates said it is the black lawmakers who are refusing to let the past be the past.
Del. Robert F. McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach), who introduced the salute last week, said he regards it as a "wholesome and healthy and patriotic" message. He said the intent was not to be divisive, and urged members to take the salute's words at face value.
"We don't inquire about the values and the feelings and the backgrounds of a patron of a bill," he said. "We look at what the legislation says. Where does that stop? Will we have to distance ourselves from the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence because they were written by slave-owners?"
Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter (R-Prince William) said legislators should focus their efforts on balancing the budget.
"This capitol is in Richmond. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. What are we going to do, move the capitol out of Richmond?" he asked. "There comes a point when you scratch your head and wonder when we are going to move on to other business."

FEBRUARY

Here’s a local item on efforts by African Americans to preserve the once-segregated black high school in Charlottesville as a monument to community life under Jim Crow and the importance of education in the struggle for racial equality.

February 04, 2002

The Washington Post

Va. City's Past, Future Collide; Charlottesville Split Over Plan To Raze Old Black High School
These days, it seems everyone in town has a dream for the aging Jefferson School.
Where some educators see a renovated center for preschool children and adults -- the school's primary purpose today -- city planners have long envisioned housing and shops as part of a revitalized downtown retail district.
Preservationists and some African Americans, meanwhile, talk of turning the historic building into a museum because it is one of the few remaining schools in Virginia that knew the pain of both segregation and desegregation. What's more, it survived the city's attempt at urban renewal in the 1960s, when most of the historically black Vinegar Hill community was bulldozed, forcing dozens of families from their homes and businesses and leaving little more than empty lots.

"Everything that has happened to us in Charlottesville is linked to this school," said Priscilla Whiting, 71, who graduated from Jefferson in 1949 and organized alumni reunions even after it stopped functioning as a K-12 school in the early 1970s. "It represented our struggle to simply get an education."
The original Jefferson School was started during Reconstruction by Anna Gardener, an abolitionist from Nantucket, Mass., who came south to teach former slaves. The current building dates to the 1870s and was enlarged to its present size in 1927, when it began to hold high school classes. Before that, many African American families would send their high school-age children to places such as the District to be educated.
During the Jim Crow 1930s, Jefferson was one of a half-dozen accredited high schools for blacks in Virginia. Over the years, it has educated almost every segment of the Vinegar Hill community, including its youngest and oldest members, its disabled and its poorest.
City officials talked for a long time of selling the four-acre Jefferson property, but only in the last year did the City Council move seriously. The discussions of turning the site into houses and shops, with a small museum of African American history, occurred mostly in closed-door sessions. The community took little notice.
Then, last month, the School Board voted 4 to 3 to close Jefferson by September, dispersing its preschool and adult education students throughout the school system.

The board's action galvanized opponents of the sale. As their protests grew more vocal, the political debacle entangled Mayor Blake Caravati (D), who is running for reelection this spring. The City Council, led by the mayor, backed off its plans last week, withdrawing a request for development proposals.
"Distrust has a lot to do with what's going on," said School Board member Muriel Wiggins, who voted against closing Jefferson. "But it's not a new distrust at all. The African Americans here saw that all the city was doing was . . . wiping out the last vestiges of their history."
But there's more to Jefferson than just history, community leaders say. Many credit its preschool program with giving black children a critical boost as they head into a school system that has a wide achievement gap between white and black students. Of the 128 youngsters enrolled in the preschool, 78 percent are African American and 89 percent qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
It took some time for Jefferson's supporters to rally around the school, however, in part because its aging alumni are dwindling in numbers and also because the community now has more young blacks with no connection to the school.
"The City Council was not open with its dealings on Jefferson, but at the same time we failed to act as a community when we needed to," said Kenneth Martin, who recently formed a black civic group called Preservation Jefferson.
Things changed last month when former mayor Nancy O'Brien picked up the local paper one morning and realized how close the property was to being sold. She called a community meeting, expecting 20 or 30 people to show up. Instead, she got close to 100.
Those gathered took turns sharing their connection to the school: the student operettas and dances they'd attended, a teacher named Janie Johnson who was everyone's favorite. Others spoke of the importance of the school's English-as-a-Second-Language program and the significance of the building's historic design.
"It was extraordinary. . . . All these people, black and white, were coming together, needing each other to save this school," O'Brien said. "Jefferson brought us together."

The next item is one I’m sure you’re all familiar with, the assault on U.Va. students last February by a group of Charlottesville high school students. I’ve included it here because of the involvement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the controversy over civil-rights inspired “hate crimes” legislation.

February 27, 2002

The Washington Post

U-Va. Town Confronts Questions Of Race; Alleged Attacks By Teens Debated As Hate-Motivated

DATELINE: Charlottesville

It is hard to say what was more disturbing to the citizens of this bucolic college town when a group of teenagers was arrested in a series of sometimes-brutal assaults on students at the University of Virginia.
It was bad enough that the accused were 10 local high school students who police believe beat up college students on six occasions just for the thrill of it.
But when a police investigator announced that three of the suspects said they had chosen targets because they looked different, residents reeled, contemplating how run-of-the-mill, town-and-gown friction could turn so ugly. The suspects are black, and the victims are white or Asian. Once the race issue was out in the open, the police chief hurried to say that the investigation is continuing, that more students could be charged as accessories and that it is premature to assign motive.
But the attacks already have aroused passion throughout the city, known for its tolerance, liberalism and the dominance of the university founded by Thomas Jefferson. With four out of 10 city residents attending the school, and many more working there, the arrests of black teenagers charged with assaulting mostly white college students has generated an intense debate over racial issues and the definition of hate crimes.
A white-rights group called European-American Unity and Rights Organization, headed by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, is publicizing the case nationwide and demanding that the black teenagers be prosecuted for hate crimes against whites.
The European-American Unity and Rights Organization contends that hate-crime prosecutions are applied unfairly, used only when the victim is a minority. "It's one-sided," said Vincent Breeding, national director of the group. "There are no whites who are victims whose assailants are being prosecuted. If we're going to have a tolerance of diversity in society, it can't be a one-way street."
Ron Doggett, head of the Virginia chapter of the group, said he has asked almost 10,000 people on his nationwide mailing list to pressure city officials to invoke the hate-crime provision. He also asked the U.S. Justice Department to intervene, but FBI spokesman Lawrence Barry said agents are convinced police are investigating appropriately.
Alvin Edwards, a former Charlottesvillemayor and pastor who has three of the student suspects in his congregation at Mount Zion Baptist Church, believes class, not race, lies at the root of the assaults. He said many local teenagers, particularly African Americans, resent the university because they consider it largely inaccessible to them. He also doubts race was involved because two students in the clique, who were questioned and released without charges, are white girls.
"How can it be an attack on whites when whites are involved?" he asked.
Mayor Blake Caravati said the city is approaching the incidents as "a teachable moment."
"Sure, they did wrong, but they're our young men and women who are going to live in the community a long time," Caravati said. "We need to be supportive of them. This is an opportunity to talk about the situation, use it to learn and change our community in a positive way."

Here’s an item that speaks to the influence of the New Christian Right in the South and the conservative agenda being advanced by Republican lawmakers who have taken control of the Virginia General Assembly.

February 4, 2002

The Washington Post

Freshmen Plunge Into Lawmaking in Va.; Bills of Mostly Conservative Delegates Range From Practical to Comical

L. Scott Lingamfelter, a Republican in a sea of Republicans, had a rude awakening on Day 7 of the 60-day Virginia General Assembly session.
A House of Delegates committee told the rookie lawmaker from Prince William County that his bill to post the Ten Commandments in public schools was blatantly unconstitutional.
Lingamfelter worked feverishly, consulting lawyers, bill writers and fellow delegates. He arrived at his desk at 6:30 a.m. every day last week to craft a new bill that will have a shot before the committee today: A montage of historical texts would go on school walls instead, to ensure the separation of church and state. "I'm not going to be obdurate about it," said the retired Army colonel. "It's got to be right."
Lingamfelter is one of 22 new delegates from across Virginiawho are getting a crash course in legalese and parliamentary procedure, the persistence of lobbyists and the strict pecking order in the 100-member House.
The newcomers are generally younger and more conservative than the lawmakers they replaced, many of them Democrats forced by Republican redistricting to retire.
Lingamfelter campaigned against raising taxes and for returning conservative values to everyday life. Other freshman lawmakers include a mortician, a graduate student and former mayors, local supervisors and prosecutors. Six represent the Washington suburbs, from Fairfax County to the edge of the Shenandoah Valley. Some of their constituents identify less with the District than with a ruralVirginiaof gun and property rights. But they also crave solutions to the vexing transportation and school needs wrought by the region's explosive growth.
As a group, the freshman Republicans helped the GOP win historic command of the House in November. With 64 seats, Republicans have an edge of 30 members. For the most part, the freshmen's seats are safe; many of their constituencies were drawn by the partisan redistricting process.