Anniversary

‘New Birth of Freedom Day’ and the Third Reconstruction

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Today, April 9, is the Sesquicentennial (15oth) Anniversary of the unofficial end to the Civil War when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.

Brian Beutler at The New Republic argued that we should make its defeat, and the end of slavery, a national holiday, and call it “New Birth of Freedom Day”.

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The Civil War left unresolved many issues that Americans are still in conflict over today. Much of this results from the Compromise of 1877, an unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. presidential election by awarding Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, on the understanding that Hayes would pull federal troops out of state politics in the South. This “Grand Bargain” effectively ended the Reconstruction Era.

Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University and the author of “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad,” “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution” and “A Short History of Reconstruction,” recently wrote at the New York Times, Why Reconstruction Matters:

THE surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, 150 years ago next month, effectively ended the Civil War. Preoccupied with the challenges of our own time, Americans will probably devote little attention to the sesquicentennial of Reconstruction, the turbulent era that followed the conflict. This is unfortunate, for if any historical period deserves the label “relevant,” it is Reconstruction.

Issues that agitate American politics today — access to citizenship and voting rights, the relative powers of the national and state governments, the relationship between political and economic democracy, the proper response to terrorism — all of these are Reconstruction questions. But that era has long been misunderstood.

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Rejecting the Neo-Confederate Arizona Tea-Publican Party

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The modern day Tea-Publican Party in Arizona has forfeited any claim of right to refer to itself as the “Party of Lincoln.” The anti-federal government Neo-Confederate secessionist bills recently passed by these Tea-Publican insurrectionists, see Thank God it’s Sine Die!, demonstrates that they are the very antithesis of the “Party of Lincoln.”

The “Party of Lincoln” is dead. It’s dead carcass has been hollowed out by the far-right fringe parasites of the Neo-Confederate secessionists, John Birchers, and theocratic Dominionists. The pundits have yet to come to accept this obvious fact, and to write the obituary of the Arizona Republican Party.

And yet Arizona Tea-Publicans dare to hold Lincoln Day Dinners, and to thereby dishonor the name of the president for whom they feign admiration. The Republic’s E.J. Montini reported that “Maricopa County Republicans invited has-been rocker and right-wing blowhard Ted Nugent to speak at their annual Lincoln Day dinner last Saturday.” Ted Nugent Goes On Unhinged Rant About Shooting Immigrants, ‘Crushing’ Democrats:

TED NUGENT 11X14 NTed Nugent was just getting started in his Saturday address to the Republican Party of Maricopa County, Arizona, when he blamed veterans’ suicides on President Obama.

Nugent suggested that people shoot immigrants who illegally cross the southern border, fondly recalling a time he threatened to shoot a trespasser on his property.

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“Let’s not just win, let’s crush the enemy,” he said, before saying of Nancy Pelosi: “Bitch ain’t in jail yet?” Nugent added that he and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio — who introduced him at the event — should arrest former IRS official Lois Lerner and declared that whoever thought the U.S. compound in Benghazi “had adequate security is the devil.”

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Later, Nugent said the GOP should be more aggressive and finally put Hillary Clinton in jail.

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Happy Birthday ‘ObamaCare’

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Against all odds, the Affordable Care Act aka “ObamaCare” turns 5 today. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the historic law that has transformed the lives of millions of Americans.

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Steve Benen writes, 5 years later, ‘Obamacare’ critics can’t believe their lying eyes:

Exactly five years ago today, the White House hosted a signing ceremony in the East Room for one of the most important policy breakthroughs in a generation. Policymakers from both parties have talked about providing health security for all of the nation’s families for roughly a century, but on March 23, 2010, officials gathered not just to talk but to celebrate action.

Vice President Biden introduced President Obama to the audience and, in comments that weren’t intended for the public’s ears, said to the president off-mic, “This is a big f***ing deal.” Five years later, there’s little doubt that Biden was entirely correct.

If you’d told me five years ago that on March 23, 2015, the Affordable Care Act would exceed expectations on every possible metric, including reducing the nation’s uninsured rate by a third, I’d say “Obamacare” would look like a great success. And fortunately for the country, that’s exactly what’s happened.

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50th Anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma this Saturday

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This Saturday, March 7, is the 50th anniversary of the first Selma to Montgomery March and Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama:

Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7, and, led by John Lewis and other SNCC and SCLC activists, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people.

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State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (in the foreground), is being beaten by state troopers (Photo: James “Spider” Martin Photographic Archive/Briscoe Center, University of Texas at Austin)

“Bloody Sunday” was televised around the world. Martin Luther King called for civil rights supporters to come to Selma for a second march. When members of Congress pressured him to restrain the march until a court could rule on whether the protesters deserved federal protection, King found himself torn between their requests for patience and demands of the movement activists pouring into Selma. King, still conflicted, led the second protest on March 9 but turned it around at the same bridge.

On March 21, the final successful march began with federal protection.

On August 6, 1965, the federal Voting Rights Act was passed, completing the process that King had hoped for.

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50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

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KennedyIt was an epochal moment in American history.

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a Report to the American People on Civil Rights and called upon Congress to enact sweeping civil rights legislation.  “I am asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public — hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.” Civil Rights Announcement, 1963 (excerpt):

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he can not send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

One hundred years have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

An assassin’s bullet cut short  the life of President Kennedy in Dallas in November. He did not live to see his civil rights bill enacted by Congress.

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