White America's Obsession With The "Black Confederate" Myth

[Black Panther]

And it's a working tactic to rewrite history and speak for our ancestors. They are going after Black children too.

This is a real comic: Gunhawks Introduces Black Confederates

Someone reading the Gunhawks comic might well think that lots of plantations in the South where "there was never any mention of slavery... and all the blacks came and went as they pleased... in addition to being paid for their work..." There may well have been a plantation out there like that, but it would have been an outlier, for sure.

Never knew about this, and I consider myself a bit of a comics historian. :bpohh:

Disgraceful.

 

[xoxodede]

They aren't victims, they're con men. A lot of people have recognized old white conservatives are saps who have money, which they love to give to like minded black people in order to prove they aren't racist. Or to make them feel better about being racist.

I say both. Cause you have to be a victim as well to help spread something so disrespectful and damaging to not only yourself but your people.

H.K. Edgerton seems mentally unstable too.

 

[xoxodede]

The Confederacy was a slaveowning and using society-- with slavery making up nearly 40% of the population.

Confederate soldiers owned and used slaves, and many enslaved black children and men accompanied their masters to war. Black teamsters, musicians and other noncombatants accompanied the armies. Black laborers were sometimes pressed into Confederate service. But they're not soldiers. They were forced slaves made to accompany their enslavers.

Enslaved cooks at a Confederate Camp

Officers and Cook, 57 Georgia Regiment, Confederate States of America Army (Officers of Company H (Independent Volunteers) of the 57th Georgia Regiment, Army of Tennessee, 1863. Left to right, First Lieutenant Archibald C. McKinley, Captain John Richard Bonner, Scott (cook), and Second Lieutenant William S. Stetson), circa 1860’s, photographer unknown
Many were children:

A Confederate using a enslaved child as a seat

Burrell and his enslaver John Wallace Comer

 

[IllmaticDelta]

What do you think?

they do it for the same reason that keep trying to spin that story about european indentured servants being the same as slaves in the USA and that myth about black people in the USA starting slavery

Is it something we should speak out more against? Many Black children today are growing up thinking Black men fought to stay enslaved. It's not cool or mentally healthy.

@IllmaticDelta @Supper @Diasporan Royalty @im_sleep @CharlieManson

yeah, if those lies become accepted as truth and more widespread

 

[im_sleep]

We gotta keep up the facts. We always gotta be willing to tell our story. This is why I get disappointed when alot of us lament about slavery, slave movies, etc. If we don’t fully know and understand our ancestors stories to re-tell it as they would want us to, these devils will do there best to re-write it the same way they’ve tried to re-write world history, religion, etc.

 

[ThatTruth777]

Glad I was taught correctly about the Civil War. :bpwhew:

This is part of an ongoing attempt by certain whites to trivialize Black suffering and de-legitimize claims of racism.

devils love half truths

 

[xoxodede]

We gotta keep up the facts. We always gotta be willing to tell our story. This is why I get disappointed when alot of us lament about slavery, slave movies, etc. If we don’t fully know and understand our ancestors stories to re-tell it as they would want us to, these devils will do there best to re-write it the same way they’ve tried to re-write world history, religion, etc.

I totally agree. A lot of Black people are ashamed of their ancestors enslavement - and I feel like it's because they haven't even tried to confront it.

They speak about slavery - but if you ask them do they know their ancestors names who were enslaved - like their 2nd, 3rd, 4th Great Grandparents - they don't know and haven't tried to find out either.

And now white people are re-writing our ancestors stories cause most of us don't wanna talk or learn about it.

 

[xoxodede]

When and why did the myth start?

From upcoming book: Searching For Black Confederate Soldiers: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth

It was the era of desegregation, following the civil rights movement that gave us the black Confederate soldier. The very first references surfaced among members of the SCV in response to the popularity of the television series Roots, which aired in 1977. Roots offered the viewing public a sobering look at the horrors of slavery, but it also highlighted emancipation as a central goal of the Civil War and the role that black Union soldiers played in securing that goal, along with the preservation of the Union itself. A small but vocal group of people within the SCV described Roots as a “modern Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and interpreted it as a threat to their own preferred narrative. Violent scenes of slaves being whipped and escaping from their owners undercut the core of the Lost Cause narrative that the SCV continued to hold dear. SCV leadership issued requests to individual chapters to scour family papers and libraries for stories of “SERVICES PERFORMED BY SOUTHERN NEGROES, SLAVE OR FREE, FOR THE CONFEDERACY.” Such calls grew louder as scholars and the public both paid increasing attention to the centrality of slavery and emancipation in the Civil War.

The origins of the black Confederate myth can be found in the war itself. African Americans played critical roles in the war effort between 1861 and 1865, but it was not on the battlefield as soldiers. The Confederate government used African Americans for a wide range of activities to help offset their significant disadvantages with manpower and war materiel. Tens of thousands of slaves were impressed by the government, often against the will of their owners, to help with the construction of earthworks around the cities of Richmond, Petersburg, and Atlanta. Slaves were also assigned to the construction and repair of rail lines and as workers in iron foundries and other factories producing war materiel. In the armies, they worked as teamsters, cooks, and musicians. The vast majority of these men functioned as slaves in the Confederacy’s war effort and not as soldiers.

​

 

[xoxodede]

At the very beginning of his new collection of essays Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a few thoughts about the historical significance of the Confederate slave enlistment debate. According to Coates the debate itself reflects a deeply ingrained and long-standing “fear” that assumptions of black inferiority are unfounded.

The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union’s “colored troops,” a flailing Confederacy began considering an attempt to recruit blacks into its army. But in the nineteenth century, the idea of the soldier was heavily entwined with the notion of masculinity and citizenship. How could an army constituted to defend slavery, with all of its assumptions about black inferiority, turn around and declare that blacks were worthy of being invited into Confederate ranks? As it happened, they could not. “The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of our revolution,” observed Georgia politician Howell Cobb. “And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” There could be no win for white supremacy here. If blacks proved to be the cowards that “the whole theory of slavery” painted them as, the battle would literally be lost. But much worse, should they fight effectively–and prove themselves capable of “good Negro government”–then the larger would could never be won. (pp. xiv-xv)​

 

[xoxodede]

White men (and women) are online and offline fighting HARD in comment sections, lectures, books, etc - to speak for enslaved Black men who were Confederate slaves.

Here are few comments out of probably hundreds of thousands on the web.

I’ve really been enjoying the “Black Confederate” count thread as it has brought to light some interesting personnel stories. It is those individual stories that make “Black Confederates” an interesting topic and are the type of stories that the big history books overlook as they deal with moving armies and important leaders. .

My opinion on why “Black Confederates” are interesting and why people feel the need to prove that they existed is because they were unique and do not fit the normal generalizations we make. The fact that a free Black man or a slave would risk his life to defend a government that was created mainly to protect slavery (my opinion) makes one curious about such an individual’s story. Such stories to me show the complexity of human relationships, life and man’s ability to overcome barriers. Take a few pages back the story of Moses Dallas the boat pilot who was a slave in the deep south yet somehow (I’m sure with a lot of hardwork/smarts) became such a skilled boat pilot that men who were most likely (if not certainly) racist trusted him to pilot their ship into battle where he died alongside many of them. That’s a man who overcame slavery and racism to become so skilled that he was respected and trusted by the very society that kept him oppressed… to me that’s an interesting story.

----

Some things to consider:
- not all black men in the south were enslaved, as your comment seems to imply. The free black population in the south was actually larger than the free black population in the north, and some of those men were property owners (this was supposedly what some of the men from the 1st Louisiana told Benjamin Butler motivated them). They were subject to many of the same societal pressures as the white population in a time of war.

- some slaves who picked up a gun could have done so for a variety of reasons: personal loyalty to the men around them, not wanting to be left out of a fight, getting caught up in the moment, etc. It wouldn't always be a big picture consideration.

- the situation during the war was not static. It might seem wise to side with your state when the war began, but the emancipation proclamation might make the risk of going north suddenly far more worth it than it had been at the start of the war.

-----

Thousands of slaves and free blacks did serve with honor in the Confederate Army. Indeed, twenty percent of the Confederate Navy was black as well. There are hundreds of photographs taken of black Confederates taken with their white mess-mates at reunions held decades after the war. . .

-----

Does it seem strange to anyone else that in the far more racist, Jim Crow days of the early 1900s, that newspaper writers had no problem with recognizing former slaves as "Confederate Veterans", but in this supposedly more enlightened age, the very idea is often mocked and met with non-stop skepticism? I find that odd, to say the least.

I just find it interesting that in a more racist age in American history, people were willing to confer honor and the status of "veteran" on men they were well aware had been slaves during the war. And today all we can do is to call the black Confederate a "myth", say they were so few as to be meaningless, etc. Some today seem far more eager to "keep the slave in his place" than the very men that slave served. And free black men are ignored entirely.

-----

You are trying to play semantics by using “soldiers” to falsely bolster your case trying to imply that “soldiers” are not the wagon teamers, ditch diggers, etc, etc. Do you also degrade out soldiers today that do “carry a gun?” Or do you continually ignore those who then did “see the elephant?” Do you degrade the US blacks on 1863-65 that only “dug ditches”? Or the fact the US didn’t allow blacks untill 1863 while the South did employ both slave and free blacks? It is common knowledge that there were black Confederates there (http://www.37thtexas.org/html/BlkHist.html). I notice you do not address any of the Official record accounts or the testimony of Gen Forrest?? Compatriot Kelly “Black Confederates” documents very well many blacks Confederates. As does Compatriot Nelson Winbush when he speak of his grandfather who fought with Gen Forrest.​

 

[#1 pick]

You should create a YouTube channel on this

 

[Black Haven]

White men (and women) are online and offline fighting HARD in comment sections, lectures, books, etc - to speak for enslaved Black men who were Confederate slaves.

Here are few comments out of probably hundreds of thousands on the web.

I’ve really been enjoying the “Black Confederate” count thread as it has brought to light some interesting personnel stories. It is those individual stories that make “Black Confederates” an interesting topic and are the type of stories that the big history books overlook as they deal with moving armies and important leaders. .

My opinion on why “Black Confederates” are interesting and why people feel the need to prove that they existed is because they were unique and do not fit the normal generalizations we make. The fact that a free Black man or a slave would risk his life to defend a government that was created mainly to protect slavery (my opinion) makes one curious about such an individual’s story. Such stories to me show the complexity of human relationships, life and man’s ability to overcome barriers. Take a few pages back the story of Moses Dallas the boat pilot who was a slave in the deep south yet somehow (I’m sure with a lot of hardwork/smarts) became such a skilled boat pilot that men who were most likely (if not certainly) racist trusted him to pilot their ship into battle where he died alongside many of them. That’s a man who overcame slavery and racism to become so skilled that he was respected and trusted by the very society that kept him oppressed… to me that’s an interesting story.

----

Some things to consider:
- not all black men in the south were enslaved, as your comment seems to imply. The free black population in the south was actually larger than the free black population in the north, and some of those men were property owners (this was supposedly what some of the men from the 1st Louisiana told Benjamin Butler motivated them). They were subject to many of the same societal pressures as the white population in a time of war.

- some slaves who picked up a gun could have done so for a variety of reasons: personal loyalty to the men around them, not wanting to be left out of a fight, getting caught up in the moment, etc. It wouldn't always be a big picture consideration.

- the situation during the war was not static. It might seem wise to side with your state when the war began, but the emancipation proclamation might make the risk of going north suddenly far more worth it than it had been at the start of the war.

-----

Thousands of slaves and free blacks did serve with honor in the Confederate Army. Indeed, twenty percent of the Confederate Navy was black as well. There are hundreds of photographs taken of black Confederates taken with their white mess-mates at reunions held decades after the war. . .

-----

Does it seem strange to anyone else that in the far more racist, Jim Crow days of the early 1900s, that newspaper writers had no problem with recognizing former slaves as "Confederate Veterans", but in this supposedly more enlightened age, the very idea is often mocked and met with non-stop skepticism? I find that odd, to say the least.

I just find it interesting that in a more racist age in American history, people were willing to confer honor and the status of "veteran" on men they were well aware had been slaves during the war. And today all we can do is to call the black Confederate a "myth", say they were so few as to be meaningless, etc. Some today seem far more eager to "keep the slave in his place" than the very men that slave served. And free black men are ignored entirely.

-----

You are trying to play semantics by using “soldiers” to falsely bolster your case trying to imply that “soldiers” are not the wagon teamers, ditch diggers, etc, etc. Do you also degrade out soldiers today that do “carry a gun?” Or do you continually ignore those who then did “see the elephant?” Do you degrade the US blacks on 1863-65 that only “dug ditches”? Or the fact the US didn’t allow blacks untill 1863 while the South did employ both slave and free blacks? It is common knowledge that there were black Confederates there (http://www.37thtexas.org/html/BlkHist.html). I notice you do not address any of the Official record accounts or the testimony of Gen Forrest?? Compatriot Kelly “Black Confederates” documents very well many blacks Confederates. As does Compatriot Nelson Winbush when he speak of his grandfather who fought with Gen Forrest.​

If this isn't the most blatant white washing history I have ever seen....

 

[Afro]

I honestly can't type out the right words to describe how much this picture enrages me.

 

[Elle Driver]

All you gotta say is how can someone who’s a commodity, a slave, that has no rights willingly serve in a war? A war about upholding slavery no less. This shyt is depressing me.

 

[CreepyMcCreeperson]

The amount of time and effort these people put into justifying their constant mistreatment, and trying to convince us that our reaction is the problem is ridiculous.