The picture above was painted on a building near Fisk University, in Nashville. It was painted by my late step-son, Brad Wells. It is of W.E.B. DeBois. DuBois was graduated from Fisk and went on to become the first Black to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He was the only Black among the founders of the NAACP. He was an advocate. He was a hero. The article below was published by him in 1928. It deserves our attention. (The artist’s mother is pictured.)
Raised in the South, a southern white boy, why would I consider this attack on Robert E. Lee worthy? First and foremost, because it’s true. It’s fact. But there are a couple of very personal reasons.
One of my great grandfathers was Tennessee’s last surviving veteran of the Civil War. He died 2 days after his 104th birthday. He fought for the Union. While the middle and western parts of the state were for secession, mountainous East Tennessee was not suitable for plantations. Though rebel troops occupied Chattanooga and Knoxville initially, this part of the state was solidly for the Union.
I was 9 years old at my great grandfather’s passing. I got the word firsthand at his knee. The picture is of 4 generations: me, about the age of one, my father, his mother and her father. The ears are hereditary.
Another reason is that I, my late wife and my children were the targets of racism because she was Korean. What I experienced never attained the level that is commonly the ceaseless reality of Blacks and others of color. But, it was enough to teach me that it is not the behavior of civilized, rational people; to teach me it is wrong.
Each year on the 19th of January, there is renewed effort to canonize Robert E. Lee, the greatest confederate general. His personal comeliness, his aristocratic birth and his military prowess all call for the verdict of greatness and genius. But one thing–one terrible fact–militates against this, and that is the inescapable truth that Robert E. Lee led a bloody war to perpetuate slavery. Copperheads like The New York Times may magisterially declare, “Of course, he never fought for slavery.” Well, for what did he fight? State rights? Nonsense. The South cared only for State Rights as a weapon to defend slavery. If nationalism had been a stronger defense of the slave system than particularism, the South would have been as nationalistic in 1861 as it had been in 1812.
No. People do not go to war for abstract theories of government. They fight for property and privilege, and that was what Virginia fought for in the Civil War. And Lee followed Virginia. He followed Virginia not because he particularly loved slavery (although he certainly did not hate it), but because he did not have the moral courage to stand against his family and his clan. Lee hesitated and hung his head in shame, because he was asked to lead armies against human progress and Christian decency and did not dare refuse. He surrendered not to Grant, but to Negro Emancipation.
Today we can best perpetuate his memory and his nobler traits not by falsifying his moral debacle, but by explaining it to the young white south. What Lee did in 1861, other Lees are doing in 1928. They lack the moral courage to stand up for justice to the Negro because of the overwhelming public opinion of their social environment. Their fathers in the past have condoned lynching and mob violence, just as today they acquiesce in the disfranchisement of educated and worthy black citizens, provide wretchedly inadequate public schools for Negro children and endorse a public treatment of sickness, poverty and crime which disgraces civilization.
It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right. It is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.
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If you found this educational, edifying, interesting or otherwise worth your time, this geezer would appreciate a little supplement to those Social Security checks, They forgot to factor in the cost of publishing a blog.
Many thanks,
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