Time to Condemn Slavery, And Those Who Loved It

“No people have ever fought so valiantly for so wrong a cause.” --Ulysses S. Grant, upon accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox

Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonald, has declared April, “Confederate Appreciation Month.” Though he failed to mention slavery in his initial declaration, he hopes to honor those who died to defend it. Among Americans, there was a scant outcry.

America has always tried to look away whenever the south acted out. We continue that practice today, as though we pity them still, and wish to leave them dignity where there is none.

Slavery was a cancer. The confederacy’s very reason for being was to insure that cancer survived, and spread. All other efforts to make more of the Confederacy—to separate it from its purpose—are blatant attempts at deception, and exercises in denial. Whenever we seek to placate the South by catering to its precious Confederacy, we keep the cancer alive.

Now is the time for a resolution declaring the enslavement of African-Americans a Crime Against Humanity. Such a resolution is completely overdue.

Time to revive the spirit of the 60’s—not just the 1960’s, when African-Americans rose up to realize their finest hour—but even the 1860’s, when Abraham Lincoln threw down the gauntlet—issued the Emancipation Proclamation—and drove this nation to make a hard right turn.

Time to end all pretenses that the ante bellum South was anything more than a renegade province that waged a 200-year reign of terror against a defenseless and innocent people.

Time to admit that the confederacy was nothing more than a last ditch attempt to save slavery—to defend to the death the most vile system devised by man.

Time to condemn slavery once and for all, and to condemn those who loved it.

Just as Lincoln’s Proclamation ended all Southern hopes of England, or any other foreign power siding with the South, so a “Crimes” resolution will end all future attempts to glorify that which is officially an abomination.

Today, we can end all doubt as to where we, as a united nation, stand. No senator or representative will do it for us. If they would, then they would have done it 150 years ago, or some other time between then and now. Most have neither the will to brave those political winds, nor the vision to see what is an absolute and just imperative if this nation is to move forward as one.

You join me in offering this transformative resolution to the American People. Let Congress join us. We can do it. It is time.

The system of slavery inflicted upon the African-American people, primarily practiced in the southern states of America during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, shall henceforth and forever be declared a Crime Against Humanity.

All parties in support of said system, e.g., the Confederacy, et al, shall be deemed complicit in these crimes and unworthy of any and all further recognition except that recognition be wholly within the confines of its association with slavery, and the object of this resolution.

Signatories to this Resolution include:

Larry R. Carter, et al