Wednesday, January 30, 2019

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.

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

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