October 09, 2020

Is There a Place for the President of the Confederacy?
FAIRVIEW, Ky. -- Drive down Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way in western Kentucky, past Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School and take a right onto Jefferson Davis Highway, and a gray spike will begin to rise in the air.This obelisk -- once described as an "immobile thrust of concrete" rising from "poverty grass" by U.S. poet laureate Robert Penn Warren -- marks the birth site of the lone president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Two-thirds the size of the Washington Monument, it was completed in 1924 and was once meant to be the crown jewel of a highway through the South that would ferry auto tourists from one Confederate monument to another. Despite Kentucky having stayed in the Union, Davis' birth site is now a 19-acre state park that includes picnic grounds, a museum dedicated to his life and an elevator that runs to the top of the 351-foot obelisk.That museum will soon have a new exhibit. In June, as Confederate monuments were being torn down across the country in the wake of protests over George Floyd's killing and Breonna Taylor's, in Louisville, the Kentucky Historic Properties Advisory Commission voted 11-1 to immediately remove a 12-foot marble statue of Davis from the Kentucky Capitol rotunda in Frankfort and send it across the state to the museum at the Davis birth site in Fairview.A similar debate has been underway in Congress. In July the House of Representatives voted to remove statues honoring Confederate figures, including one of Davis, from the U.S. Capitol. "It's time to sweep away the last vestiges of Jim Crow and the dehumanizing of individuals because of the color of their skin," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, said at a news conference. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader, is not expected to allow a vote in the Senate. He has called the push to remove the Confederate monuments in Washington an attempt to "airbrush the Capitol."President Donald Trump, who threatened to punish state and local governments that fail to protect them from destruction or vandalism, has defended "our beautiful" Confederate statues, proposing a grandiose statue park that will likely never be built. Caught between calls to remove statues from public view and to leave them up, officials from Florida to Indiana and from Virginia to Texas have increasingly sought to put them in existing museums they claim will give disputed monuments "context."But those museums often do not have the resources to change generations-old history narratives, leaving states and towns wondering if they should invest more taxpayer dollars in new museums or leave the statues as they are -- and hope a lack of advertising and funding discourages people from visiting them. The effort to bring Jefferson Davis home to Fairview shows just how fraught navigating that conflict is.Around Fairview, a city of under 200, there is no consensus about what should be done with Confederate monuments and the history they represent. For generations, students from the area were brought on field trips to the Davis birth site to have lunch at its picnic grounds and ride the elevator up the obelisk. Shaneika Brooks, 42, a former welder, was one of those schoolchildren. She only realized Davis' commitment to maintaining slavery when she was older and has avoided it ever since. Now she and others worry that moving the Kentucky Capitol monument could reignite old tensions."We have enough history here with racism," she said in an interview at a park in neighboring Hopkinsville, where she now lives. "Don't bring it here because somebody else doesn't want it and don't want to deal with that problem. We don't want the problems either."Brooks grew up in Todd County and was on the varsity track and field team, wearing the gray and red colors of the Todd County Central High School Rebels. When she was in high school in the '90s, there was another period of tension over Confederate symbols. In 1995, 19-year-old Michael Westerman, who was white, was pursued and fatally shot over the weekend of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by a group of Black teenagers. Westerman had been flying a Confederate flag from his truck; one of the teenagers claimed at trial that he yelled a racial slur at them.Westerman was from Todd County, and Brooks went to high school with the teenagers involved. Two of them were sentenced to life in prison, and the murder was followed by a surge in Ku Klux Klan activity in the area. A memorial for Westerman was held at the Davis obelisk.Though decades have now passed since the murder, Brooks believes little has changed in Todd County, where her daughters faced discrimination in school. Brooks says her older daughter confronted verbal harassment from teachers and students, and her younger daughter, who is biracial, was switched from honors classes to special education when the administration learned that her mother was Black. In response Brooks moved her family to Hopkinsville. (The Todd County school district superintendent, Mark Thomas, denied that such events occurred.)Brooks sees a straight line between past and present injustices. "The superiority comes from Jefferson Davis and the monument," she said. "To them that's their superhero cape. As long as they have that they feel safe to behave how they behave." Brooks acknowledges that there have been few local calls against bringing the monument from the Kentucky Capitol. "There is not a lot of Black people to cause a ruckus, so it is the perfect place to put that monument," she said.The obelisk was originally conceived in 1907 by the so-called Orphan Brigade -- Kentuckians who volunteered to fight for the Confederacy when this border state opted to stay in the Union. They were responding to the construction of a federal birth site park in Kentucky dedicated to another famous native son, Abraham Lincoln. As the veterans died off, the United Daughters of the Confederacy took over the project in 1921 as they supported efforts across the country to downplay the role of slavery in the Confederacy and promote the "Lost Cause," what Karen Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, calls "a narrative created by white Southerners to deal with defeat by creating an alternative history."The statue of Davis put up in the Kentucky rotunda by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1936 was part of those efforts that focused as much on justifying Jim Crow as on remembering the past.In the western part of the state, with funds running low, the Fairview obelisk was ultimately completed by the state of Kentucky in 1924. Before the site's unveiling as a public park, the Ku Klux Klan was allowed to burn a large cross atop the obelisk.In the decades that followed, the park became a popular spot for school field trips and events glorifying the Confederacy. Patrick Lewis, 34, grew up going to the park in the '90s on Jefferson Davis Day, which marks Davis' birthday. The event, which has not taken place for the past two years, included a Little Miss Confederacy beauty pageant on the steps of the obelisk, and reenactments of Civil War battles that the Confederacy always won. Participants would join together and sing "Happy Birthday" to Davis."At the time it just seemed like regional pride, like rooting for the home team," Lewis said.But there were moments even as a child when that pride didn't sit well with him. One such moment came the winter after the Westerman murder, when he asked two boys in his sixth-grade class what they had gotten for Christmas and they told him their mothers had sewn them Ku Klux Klan robes. Another moment came on Jefferson Davis Day in 1994, when, during a Civil War reenactment, the Confederate Army took the Union soldiers prisoner and mock executed them one by one. "I realized for some people it was more than just rooting for the home team," Lewis said.His views continued to change in 2002 when he went to the same Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where Jefferson Davis attended. With a campus debate raging about a monument to Davis that was eventually moved to a remote part of the library, he began to question some of the ideas he had grown up with. "It grounded debate, just like Confederate monuments now are doing for the country," he said.But it was reading the founding documents of the Confederacy as a history major that ended any doubt for him about what the Confederacy stood for. "The Confederate project was to create a republic that enshrined slavery and white supremacy in its constitution," he said.Many had a similar moment of realization in 2017 when white nationalists rallied around a statue of Robert E. Lee slated for removal in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one participant killed a counterprotester. Since then, white Americans have increasingly recognized these monuments' racist past.It also marked the year Lewis returned to Fairview, after receiving a doctorate in history, as the leader of a post-Charlottesville state project to deal with the more controversial parts of the Jefferson Davis museum. He oversaw the removal of Confederate flags from the gift shop, provided new tour texts for guides and had a portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, moved to the adjacent office. But the most important element was preparing new interpretive panels intended to provide context.Most of the museum focuses on Davis' career before the Civil War -- as a veteran and U.S. senator -- and his life after it. But where Lewis' new panel would explain the history of the Davises as enslavers, there is now only a blank wall. No funds were made available to print the panels. Lewis now believes the project was only ever meant to give Matt Bevin, then the Republican governor, the appearance of action as the nation reeled from events in Charlottesville. When the statue of Davis, currently being kept at an undisclosed location for its safety, finally arrives, there will be little new context for it.Some visitors to Fairview might wonder why Kentucky has a museum and a state House statue dedicated to Davis at all. The Confederate leader left the state when he was still a toddler and grew up in Mississippi, which he represented in the U.S. Senate as well as the House before the Civil War.Though Kentucky originally tried to stay neutral in the war, in 1861 Unionist candidates won nine of the state's 10 congressional seats and absolute majorities in both houses of the state Legislature. Pro-Confederate Kentuckians then created their own rival assembly, which voted for secession.The area around Fairview was once pro-Union. But according to Lewis, it was after the war that Kentuckians rushed to embrace the Confederacy out of fear of what the postwar racial order would bring. "Kentuckians imagined themselves as the last remaining spokespeople with political power for a defeated South," he said.A common refrain today among supporters of Confederate monuments is that they represent history and not racism. Brenda Guise drove with her husband, Dave, from Stephenville, Texas, to see the obelisk. "We are trying to see these things before someone doesn't let us see them anymore," said Guise, a Navy veteran and a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. She and her husband were driving to Utica, Kentucky, to pick up a monument of a Confederate soldier they had made to put up in their yard, convinced that only Confederate monuments on private property could be protected.Support for Confederate figures can also come from unexpected places. Ron Sydnor, who is the former manager of the Davis birth site, is Black and remains an engaging defender of Davis in the region. "There is a dichotomy to Jefferson Davis," he said in the office of the museum. "He was president of the Confederacy on the one hand and on the other a revered statesman of the U.S. He went to West Point and was a veteran of the Mexican American War."Sydnor believes bringing the statue from Frankfort will increase park visitorship. But even if more people come, it will have to continue to be supported by taxpayer dollars. A 2018 Smithsonian investigation found that in the last decade, taxpayers spent at least $40 million on statues, homes, parks, museums, libraries, cemeteries and heritage organizations associated with the Confederacy.The Jefferson Davis birth site has a state-funded budget of $236,000 in fiscal year 2019, with an additional $363,000 allocated to repair the broken elevator up the obelisk. Park officials say that amount is too small for an overhaul of the museum -- but it is already too large for critics."To know that to take down and move the Jefferson Davis to Fairview cost $225,000 -- and the park itself has an over $200,000 annual budget -- is a slap in the face," said Zirconia Alleyne, editor-in-chief of The Kentucky New Era, who is from Hopkinsville and used to cover Jefferson Davis Day at the park. "Do I need to go visit a monument to have context for who someone was? I think we could just read about them. A statue is exalting a figure. I think that does more than tell the history."These questions about the role the state should play in Confederate memory have left politicians across the country struggling to determine what should be done with monuments. In Richmond, Virginia, city officials are currently collecting solicitations for the Confederate monuments removed from Monument Avenue, including one of Jefferson Davis. Proposals have been received from established institutions as well as individuals who hope to put the statues in their yards. No decisions have yet been made, but according to the Richmond City Council chief of staff, Lawrence Anderson, who is leading the process, "the intent in taking down the statues is not to build a Monument Avenue somewhere else."Some experts say the debate around them is more important than the monuments themselves. "A monument is just a thing. It only is important as long as people are willing to remember," said Mabel Wilson, a professor at Columbia University who was a member of the architectural team that designed the Memorial to Enslaved African American Laborers at the University of Virginia, which opened in August. She believes engaging people in a discussion can do more to change people's views than simply removing statues.In an attempt to support that dialogue, on Monday the Mellon Foundation announced the $250 million Monument Project to fund the relocation and contextualization of monuments, and to build new monuments commemorating more diverse contributions. Soon more controversial monuments may be moving, but for now most of the discussions remain local.Donavan Pinner, 22, recently returned to the area after graduating from Morehouse College. "It is my wish someone will make a resolution in the state Legislature to cut the budget for Fairview," he said.A preacher since he was 16, Pinner says he doesn't believe in spending so much energy on the future of monuments. In his sermons he regularly mentions the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for his congregants to take action. "Our focus should be on removing living monuments like Mitch McConnell and people like that from office who continue to do the systematic oppressive work that enables cases like Breonna Taylor's to be silent," he said.Pinner was never taken to the Jefferson Davis birth site when he was in school -- according to park officials those trips all but stopped in recent decades because of slashed school budgets, rather than a changed view of Davis -- yet he admits the monument is hard to forget. The towering Jefferson Davis obelisk continues to be a landmark for him in the flat Kentucky countryside."You can't avoid it," Pinner said. "Whenever I come back I know I am close to home when I see it."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
Related Stories
Latest News
Top news around the world
Academy Awards

‘Oppenheimer’ Reigns at Oscars With Seven Wins, Including Best Picture and Director

Get the latest news about the 2024 Oscars, including nominations, winners, predictions and red carpet fashion at 96th Academy Awards

Around the World

Politic
'Trump tax': MSNBC host Chris Hayes shows how Trump winning would increase costs
Mar 28, 2024
How much would former President Donald Trump's proposed 10 percent tariff plan actually cost the average American household?The wave of tariffs Trump enacted when he was last president caused chaos, but there are many complexities that muddy this somewhat. However, MSNBC's Chris Hayes took an educated and simple guess at just how badly the country would be hit in the pocketbook under Trump's second-term plans."We don't know exactly how much everything would cost," said Hayes, but "just add 10 percent on the back of the napkin. Here's the cost of living under the Trump Tax."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal bills"Start with groceries," he said. "A dozen eggs cost about $3. Once you apply the Trump Tax, that is up to $3.30, with the U.S. importing over 4 million eggs a year, but cost consumers over $1.2 million. If you like oranges, they currently go for about $1.53 per pound. With the Trump Tax, that would be $1.68 per pound, which would cost American consumers almost $71 million for the nearly half a billion pounds of the import. Bananas. We don't really grow them in the U.S., do we? They average about $.63 per pound and going up to $.69 per pound with the Trump Tax, thanks to the U.S. importing more than 10 million pounds per year, that could cost Americans at $609 million and that's a $609 million tax on American consumers. Then there's tomatoes. They go for about $2.13 per pound. Apply the 10 percent Trump Tax. They would be $2.34 per pound, potentially costing Americans $3.5 million thanks to the 6.8 million pounds we import per year. If you are spending $1,200 on groceries, add another $120 to the bill. That's more than the peak of inflation in 2022, which topped off at 9 percent. This is 10 percent."Groceries are just the start, he continued."How about the refrigerator?" said Hayes. "You need to keep the groceries fresh. The average cost of a new fridge is about $1,300. With the Trump Tax, that could go up to $1,430, costing Americans $1.95 billion for the 15 million refrigerators that we import. Again, $1.95 billion of new taxes. What about the car that you need to drive to the grocery store? On average, a new car costs about $48,808 today. With Trump Tax, it costs $53,684, with Americans potentially taking a $66.3 billion hit across the board on the 13 million cars we import. That's not including the 50 percent tariff which would make it another $25,000. Even the smartphone in your pocket cost on average about $940 right now. With Trump Tax, it can go up to $1,034, with Americans potentially paying an extra $13.2 billion for the nearly 141 million smartphones that we import per year.""Everyone hates when you have to pay more for things," he added. "Inflation is one of the biggest liabilities for a sitting president. Yet here is Donald Trump, in the Year of our Lord 2024, running against President Biden, promising to make things more expensive for every American."Watch the video below or click here. Chris Hayes breaks down "Trump Tax" www.youtube.com
READ MORE
Politic
Trump-endorsed candidate says Beyoncé is teaching women 'how to be hyper-sexual'
Mar 28, 2024
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson had yet another group of extremist comments unveiled — this time about legendary singer Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.According to The Root, "During a series of rants spanning multiple years, Robinson —who is Black —insulted Beyoncé’s singing abilities, called her a 'skank,' and said she was teaching 'young women how to be hyper-sexual w----s.'"For example, in 2017, Robinson posted to Facebook, “Person; Beyoncé is a role model!” Me; “The only person that butt shakin’, devil worshipping, skank is a role model to is people who want a fast track to Hell.” This is on top of previous reporting that he referred to her music as sounding like "Satanic chants."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal billsThese revelations come at a moment when Beyoncé herself has found herself at the center of some national controversy, having written a country music inspired album known as Cowboy Carter, and some country radio stations refusing to play singles off of it because of her race.Robinson, who is challenging Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein for the governorship of North Carolina, has been put under the spotlight for a number of bizarre and offensive comments throughout the years.Among other things, he has referred to school shooting survivors as "prosti-tots," pushed QAnon and "lizard people" conspiracy theories, questioned the Holocaust, and suggested American politics was better in the era when women couldn't vote.
READ MORE
Politic
'Some prosecutor should be looking into' Trump's latest legal defense scam: expert
Mar 28, 2024
Former President Donald Trump's sprawling network of ostensibly independent political groups raising money for him, much of it in service of paying legal expenses, seems to walk right up to the line of breaking the law, former prosecutor Kristy Greenberg told MSNBC's Alex Wagner — and may in fact cross it."Kristy, how is this legal?" asked Wagner. "How can he keep saying this one thing and doing another?""Well, I think the big question here will be looking behind all of this as to who is coordinating it," said Greenberg. "If Donald Trump is coordinating between his campaign and these PACs that are supposed to be third parties and independent — the Save America PAC is independent, even though he directs it, independent third-party — if there is sufficient coordination, you could prove that, then maybe you would have something to say these expenditures are not purely personal, these are really campaign contributions. And therefore they should be subject to the limits of $5,000 that campaign contributions are subject to."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal billsWhat it looks like, Greenberg went on, is that Trump and his allies are "just trying to do an end-run around these various regulations, and it seems so transparent.""[Special counsel] Jack Smith ... had served some subpoenas in connection with that nonexistent, as it turns out, election defense fund," Greenberg said. "He served some subpoenas and then he withdrew them and it was unclear why, because that seemed like such a clear-cut fraud. I questioned why that happened. Perhaps it was optics. Perhaps he thought like he had such strong cases, the January 6 case and the national security case, that he didn't want to seem as though he was trying to drain Trump of the ability to legally defend against those cases. Hard to say. But I questioned it at that time because that seemed like such a clear wire fraud case that it seemed like it should be looked into, but maybe they just had limited resources and didn't like the optics of it.""But I agree with you, this raises a lot of questions," she added. "Someone, somewhere, even if not the special counsel's office, because they are pretty busy — some prosecutors should be looking into this."Watch the video below or at the link. Kristy Greenberg on the legality of Trump's PACs www.youtube.com
READ MORE
Celebrity News

> Latest News in Media

Watch It
Millie Bobby Brown & Jake Bongiovi Celebrate “Three Years of Bliss” Ahead of Wedding
March 24, 2024
C4Ehegcq1-A
Kate Middleton & Prince William "Enormously Touched" by Public Support
March 24, 2024
s8fig-RCjFc
Gisele Bündchen Denies Cheating on Ex-Husband Tom Brady
March 23, 2024
_SpRMagA8BM
Eminem, 50 Cent & Snoop Dogg Present Dr. Dre with a Star on the Walk of Fame
March 19, 2024
4bNLs1hxVp8
Opening Remarks for the Variety Summit October 20th, 2023 Jay Penske
March 18, 2024
c6Z707iLq8E
'Everybody Was S----ing Their Pants': Nick Thune Jokes About Being Born in the '70s and Fatherhood
March 16, 2024
mm7Baf6o2d8
Gunna Says Tour Will Up Creativity in Rap, Endorses Flo Milli | TMZ
March 22, 2024
QfMU24fw-Qo
Reporter Taylor Lorenz Says Palace Botched Kate Cancer News Rollout | TMZ Live
March 22, 2024
o43ZucdiyEo
Riley Strain's Body Found After Going Missing in Nashville 2 Weeks Ago | TMZ NOW
March 22, 2024
1m1zM-4_Cs8
Kyle Richards hasn’t spoken to co-star Dorit Kemsley, denies sending her a ‘manipulative’ text
March 24, 2024
LqLZzDP1hm4
Jordan Emanuel on her connection to 'RHOSLC' star Meredith Marks, advice from Amanda Batula
March 24, 2024
5NPAwlOov1Y
Kate Middleton’s uncle Gary apologizes after slamming ‘fickle’ Meghan Markle in scathing interview
March 24, 2024
JWG9kitALZk
TV Schedule
Late Night Show
Watch the latest shows of U.S. top comedians

Sports

Latest sport results, news, videos, interviews and comments
Latest Events
20
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Playoffs - Women
SK Brann W - Barcelona W
20
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Playoffs - Women
Hacken W - PSG W
19
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Playoffs - Women
SL Benfica W - Lyon W
19
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Playoffs - Women
Ajax W - Chelsea W
17
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Atletico Madrid - Barcelona
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester United - Liverpool
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Inter Milan - Napoli
17
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Brighton - Manchester City
17
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Borussia Dortmund - Eintracht Frankfurt
17
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Chelsea - Leicester City
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Roma - Sassuolo
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Verona - AC Milan
17
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Genoa
16
Mar
GERMANY: Bundesliga
Darmstadt - Bayern Munich
16
Mar
ENGLAND: FA Cup
Manchester City - Newcastle United
16
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Fulham - Tottenham Hotspur
16
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Osasuna - Real Madrid
13
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Atletico Madrid - Inter Milan
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Barcelona - Napoli
12
Mar
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: 1/8 Final
Arsenal - Porto
11
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Chelsea - Newcastle United
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Liverpool - Manchester City
10
Mar
SPAIN: La Liga
Real Madrid - Celta Vigo
10
Mar
ENGLAND: Premier League
Aston Villa - Tottenham Hotspur
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Juventus - Atalanta
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
Fiorentina - Roma
10
Mar
ITALY: Serie A
AC Milan - Empoli
Find us on Instagram
at @feedimo to stay up to date with the latest.
Featured Video You Might Like
zWJ3MxW_HWA L1eLanNeZKg i1XRgbyUtOo -g9Qziqbif8 0vmRhiLHE2U JFCZUoa6MYE UfN5PCF5EUo 2PV55f3-UAg W3y9zuI_F64 -7qCxIccihU pQ9gcOoH9R8 g5MRDEXRk4k
Copyright © 2020 Feedimo. All Rights Reserved.