My computer died, and suddenly I couldn’t post these images. I’m nearly ready to post regularly and then this weekend happened.
I have lots of thoughts, but they aren’t very well organized. So I'm just going to tell the story of how I once met one of the organizers of the Charlottesville racist rally.
I completely cosign this statement from bell hooks.
In 2011 I was a guest at Tigercon at Towson University. I was selling a t-shirt with my “Treason in Defense of Slavery Should not be Celebrated” on it and I see 3 good ol’ boys walk in. I could tell one of them was the leader, they looked over in my direction with big, shit-eating grins on their faces.
I knew what was going to happen. I also realized I left the Cornerstone Speech and the Articles of Confederation in my car.
Fortunately, I knew how to handle the situation. Selling the shirt in Richmond and Raleigh had prepared me.
I see them reading the shirt and a troubled look came across their faces.
“You know it wasn’t,” Matthew Heimbach, the future organizer of the Charlottesville rally said to me.
”I’m sorry?” I said, playing dumb.
“Your shirt, the war wasn’t fought over slavery.” He said. His two idiot freinds looking smug.
”Have you ever read the Articles of Secession?” He shook his head. “It’s the documents from the states who tried to secede, explaining their reasons. You should read them, if you are into the Civil War, they're quite interesting. It says that because an abolitionist like Abraham Lincoln was elected, they must protect the institution of slavery. South Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi and all the others I’ve read said the same thing."
Heimbach said the institution of slavery was dying and that it would have ended in 7-years. I have never taken the time to figure out where this lie came from, but I heard it before. If you actually study the documents of the time, and you don’t even have to delve deep, either, you can see that it’s not true. I said simply, "No."
Heimbach looked confused, I followed up with my knock out punch, "The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, said the opposite when he was a congressman shortly before the war. In his Cornerstone Speech, Stephens said simply, the cornerstone of the Southern economy is slavery and without slavery, the Southern economy would collapse.”
Heimbach needed to make a fast retreat. His friends had no clue what just happened. I used the words of Alexander Stephens and documents of the confederacy against him. I shot down every ignorant statement he made. He did what every racist does when they get caught or called out, run away by shaking your hand and telling you to “have a nice day.”
I hate it when racists do that because you look like an asshole when you don’t wish them a nice day back. Even online, if they don’t have a temper tantrum and block you first, they do this.
I shook his hand and told him to read those documents. He said he would.
Heimbach was rattled. Apparently, nobody at Towson had done that before. His professors let him give racist presentations and he’s not a dumb guy. A dangerous guy, but not stupid.
Someone I knew who went to school with him came up to me to see what happened, and I told her. We saw he left the event shortly after that.
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