Trail of Tears and Daughters of Confederacy

   Wedsnesday Huck Treadwell had a front page story in the Ft Payne Alabama Times Journal about the recent mishmash concerning the McAdory HS football banner and the Trail of Tears. My Hometown Gaffney, S.C is the Gaffney Indians.

    Ft Payne was one of the starter sites for the Trail of Tears so it was an interesting story. My complaint is the Daughters of the Confederacy and the unwitting racism of the local tea Party deserves as much ink and spotlight as this Trail of Tears controversy. FTR I think the Times Journal did a good job giving the McAdory cheerleaders a break on this one.

    The TJ and local Historical Associations need go no further than the easily googled Tracy Thompson piece on the Daughters of the Confederacy in Salon Mag to get the conversation started. Talk to Rebecca Clayton of the Collinsville Historical Association; folks in Terrapin Hills and The Hill in Collinsville as well as the Lebanon Community. See the Movie 12 Yrs a Slave and read the chapter the Carceral Landscape in Walter Johnson's watershed book The River of Dark Dreams. Good review of that book is just a google away searching for Delbanco, Lincoln's Long Game.

   Here is looking for a front page follow-up!