Letter to the Equal Justice Initiative asking them not to collude with the city of Dallas until the city of Dallas gives up glorifying pro-lynching leaders in their past.
There are other things in Dallas I am discovering relating to lynching and I will likely write the Equal Justice Initiative again.
December
19, 2018
Edward
H. Sebesta
edwardsebesta@gmail.com
Jerome
Gray
Chairman
of the Board
Equal
Justice Initiative
122
Commerce Street
Montgomery,
Alabama 36104
Dear Mr.
Gray:
I am
writing you to very be careful that you do not inadvertently collude with the City
of Dallas in its ongoing incompetence in confronting its past. Specifically, its failure to recognize
Dallas’s special history regarding lynching and its possible use of a memorial
element to obscure its historical past or obscure its incompetence in
addressing the historical past.
If you
think this is fanciful or outlandish, consider that the City of Dallas almost
gave its large massive bronze equestrian Robert E. Lee to the Texas Civil War
Museum before I intervened alerting the Fort Worth press and others that this
museum had clear neo-Confederate orientation, and included in the building the
museum of the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. If
this had gone through the Texas Civil War Museum’s reputation and prestige
would have been tremendously enhanced and allowing it to function as a major
Confederate shrine. The museum is located in White Settlement, Texas and the
name of the town, which the voters had in a 2005 referendum voted to retain,
means exactly that, a settlement of Caucasians.
There is
an article on the Texas Civil War Museum in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram describing its sympathies with the
Confederacy. https://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-kennedy/article206104929.html.
The article has a link to my very hastily written online paper on the museum. From
my documentation you can see why I consider it a Museum of the Confederacy in
disguise.
The
sentiments of the Texas Civil War Museum seemed to have been known by other
local historians besides myself. I think that the City of Dallas didn’t send
the monument to the Texas Civil War Museum, not because it would be a
reprehensible thing to do, but likely, in my opinion, because civic leaders in
Fort Worth were livid that this toxic waste of a statue was going to be dumped
on them.
I am a
published scholar: co-editor of two university press books, multiple articles
in peer-reviewed academic journals, and in Black
Commentator. I am also the recipient of the Spirit of Freedom medal from
the African American Civil War Museum in Washington, DC for my life’s work. Numerous journalists use my research with
attribution. My resume is online at http://templeofdemocracy.com/curriculum-vitae.html.
I am sure
you are familiar with the lynching of Ed Johnson in Hamilton County, Tennessee
in 1906 with the collusion of the local sheriff and which resulted in the only
criminal court case ever tried before the Supreme Court of the United States in
which the local sheriff was found guilty of contempt of court. For members of
your staff who are unfamiliar with the case, I recommend “Contempt of Court,”
by Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips Jr. (Anchor 2001).
As is
often the case in Dallas history, Dallas has its own freakish racist elements
in regards to this notorious case. Neo-Confederate leader, William Lewis
Cabell, former mayor of Dallas, and at the time of the conviction for contempt
of court, Commander-in-Chief of the Dept. of the Trans Mississippi of the
United Confederate Veterans, led a campaign to have the president of the United
States pardon the lynchers found in contempt of the Supreme Court. The local
United Confederate Veterans unit, the Sterling Price Camp, on Nov. 21, 1909, voted
“unanimously” to support this effort. Many of the individuals in this camp were
civic leaders in Dallas.
This
hasn’t been generally known, since the Dallas Confederate Monument task force
seemed to be formed to sweep the neo-Confederate history of Dallas under the
rug. Make sure you don’t let them hand off to you their dust pan and broom.
W.L.
Cabell was a war criminal involved with the hideous massacre at Poison Springs.
The
Confederate War Memorial in Pioneer Park has a Cabell Medallion to honor him. A
major street in downtown Dallas is named after Cabell. The City of Dallas has
refused to change the street name and remove the monument.
Much of
the discussion of Confederate monuments has been about the Confederate leaders
involved in these monuments and the Confederacy, but little attention is given
to the dedication speeches themselves. I have given the speeches given at the
dedication and unveiling of the Dallas Confederate War Memorial detailed
review. It is about creating a civic religion to support the idea that the
Confederate soldier was a martyr for states’ rights. The speeches equated
Southern identity with Confederate identity and these identities as including a
belief in states’ rights.
This
directly ties the monument to lynching. Before the erection of this monument
afterwards there was a movement for federal legislation to prevent the
interference with elections and a campaign to get federal action against
lynching. States’ rights was the argument used to oppose legislation for civil
rights whether it was against violence in elections, lynching or otherwise.
This
neo-Confederate states’ rights ideology in Dallas shaped Dallas history.
Walter
White of the NAACP spoke out against lynching on April 29, 1938. To protect
White from violence the location of his speaking engagement had to be moved and
police protection provided. White was flown in at 3pm to give the speech and
flown out at 6 pm the same day to assure his physical safety. The leader in the
campaign of physical intimidation was Dallasite Earl E. Hurt,
Commander-in-Chief of the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Dallas
congressional representative Hatton W. Sumner fulminated against anti-lynching
legislation on April 15, 1937 in Congress with elaborate arguments based on
states’ rights concepts.
I would
also caution you about the group working on getting a memorial for Allen
Brooks. They are tasked also with providing a historical context for the
Confederate symbols at Fair Park. The misrepresentation of history here is that
the problem with Fair Park is only its Confederate symbols. As John Morán González in
his book, “Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of
Mexican American Literature,” (Univ. of Texas Press, 2009), points out that the
art work and architecture of Fair Park is a racial narrative of white supremacy
triumphing over Mexicans and African Americans. My studies have confirmed this
also. Fair Park is essentially the Texas Triumph of the Will and the artists
who created it are so many Leni Reifenstahls.
I am just
giving highlights of Dallas history in this letter, I am still doing further
research, and I am not mentioning the Ku Klux Klan material. I think what I
have mentioned in this letter should be more than enough to give you an idea of
the nature of the City of Dallas.
I think
the City of Dallas very likely would use the Equal Justice Institute sister
monuments as a façade to cover up its past and to construct a narrative how
good Dallas is now in contrast to its past.
I hope
the Equal Justice Institute doesn’t enable the City of Dallas in its failure to
acknowledge its past.
Sincerely
Yours,
Edward
H. Sebesta
CC: Eva
Ansley, Secretary/Treasurer; Ophelia Dahl; Scott Douglas, Executive Director;
Dr. Paul Farmer; Dr. Randy Hertz; George Kendall; Dr. Martha Morgan; Byran
Stevenson; Kim Taylor-Thompson; Kathy Vincent; and Carlos Williams, Executive
Director
