Honoring John C. Calhoun Community College, Decatur, Alabama

John C. Calhoun…

The very name brings chills to those who hear it mentioned.

And it should.

Calhoun was not merely a segregationist, but an open and unashamed advocate of slavery.

On Monday, February 6, 1837, on the floor of the United States Senate, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina delivered a speech in which he characterized slavery as “a positive good.”

However, Senator Calhoun’s speech before the Senate is largely absent from the official record, even though there are some extant authenticating sources.

That is, the official record of the proceedings in that era was called “Congressional Globe” and as the predecessor to the modern “Congressional Record” (a verbatim document which succeeded the Globe) it is substantially different, insofar as the Globe’s contents are NOT a verbatim source (like the Record is today), and instead, are the characterizations of a recorder(s), and read much like the minutes of a meeting.

Today, in the Congressional Record, one can read the exact words spoken by any person from the floor of either chamber – House, or Senate.

For that era however, the debates of Congress are found in the Congressional Globe, and for the date in question, the record of the debate may be found here: https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=003/llcg003.db&recNum=172.

24th Congress 2nd Session, Congressional Globe Appendix, Monday, February 6, 1837

However again, fortunately there is a source which does contain the speech. That source is the 1843 book “Speeches of John C. Calhoun: Delivered in the Congress of the United States from 1811 to the present time” which may be found in its entirety on the Internet Archive website here: https://archive.org/details/speechesofjohncc00incalh/page/222/mode/2up?q=a+good-a+positive+good.

Recently, the City of Charleston, South Carolina, which for years had

Southerners Still Want Segregated Schools Because Hatred Runs Deep In The South

Following is an excerpt to a soul-searching article about the resegregation of schools in the South. 

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, racial discrimination was prohibited in any federally funded program. But in 1964, there was very limited federal aid to schools. However, in 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Zsecondary Education Act, and there was quite a lot of federal money for schools that enrolled poor children. The Office of Education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare took the Brown decision seriously. Top officials in the Lyndon B. Johnson told Southern districts that they would lose federal funding unless they presented real data on the racial distribution of students and faculty. 

So did the federal courts. Southern districts, governors, and legislators offered “school choice” proposals. They were a farce. Federal officials rejected them. Federal courts rejected them. 

Within ten years after the passage of ESEA, the South had more integrated public schools than any other region. 

But then the great rollback began. With more conservative justices on the federal courts, the zeal to follow through on the promise of the Brown decision faded. The Department of Education, created in 1980, never had the energy and focus of the LBJ officials. 

The authors of this article write:

“As we continue our “anti-dumbass” campaign to champion and improve Southern public schools for all students, we maintain our focus on the influence poverty, race, and racism continue to play in schools. Within the current political and cultural climate, there looms a growing sense of separation, where private interests replace democratic interests and the rich and powerful profit while the poor and underserved continue to struggle. You might think we were living in the 1930s or 1940s. This is, however, 2017, and the resegregation of public schools is increasing at an alarming rate. 

“As parents and proud Southerners we constantly ask ourselves,

“Stupid is as stupid does.” Alabama State Idiot/Auditor Jim Zeigler Shoots Off Mouth, Website Violates @Wikimedia Trademark

“If you need to carry a gun in church, His Grace is NOT sufficient, and stop pretending you believe that it is.”

Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler has – like many Alabama politicians – stuck his big flat foot into his gaping stupid mouth… again.

This time, he’s on record as saying that, “Church attendees should pack. Each church should have a vigilance committee of individuals who pack and who develop their own plans for defense from an attack. Calling 911 and waiting for government defense will not work. Without armed citizens in the church congregation, they are sitting ducks for criminals and terrorists.”

Late night Tweet by Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler, which, as one respondent wrote, “I’ll attribute this to tequila shots.”

Until he was elected to the office of State Auditor, Jim Zeigler was merely a laughingstock and perennial candidate for various state-level offices having campaigned six times, whose

The Birmingham News knew of plot to assassinate Fred Shuttlesworth

The things we continue to learn about the explicit wickedness and evil of that era continues to plague the South, and the nation at large… particularly those who pander to it in the Republican party. And GOP party officials wonder why they continue to lose elections. Perhaps they should get a clue.

—

Good and Evil in Birmingham

January 20, 2013

By DIANE McWHORTER

FIFTY years ago, Birmingham, Ala., provided the enduring iconography of the civil rights era, testing the mettle of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so dramatically that he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

During his protest there in May 1963, the biblical spectacle of black children facing down Public Safety Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor’s fire hoses and police dogs set the stage for King’s Sermon on the Mount some four months later at the Lincoln Memorial. And the civil rights movement’s “Year of Birmingham” passed into history as an epic narrative of good versus evil.

Our understanding of the “good” has expanded beyond the lone-dreamer theory to embrace other activists, like King’s partner in Birmingham, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Yet the evil segregationist archetype is fixed in the popular mind as the villainous housewife of “The Help” or the cretinous mob of “Django Unchained” — nobody we’d ever know, or certainly ever be.

But the disquieting reality is that the conflict was between not good and evil, but good and normal. The brute racism that today seems like mass social insanity was a “way of life” practiced by ordinary “good” people.

According to the Southern community’s consensus of “normal,” those fighting for rights now considered mainstream were “extremists,” and public servants could rationalize plans to murder men like Shuttlesworth, confident that they were on the right side of history.

Consider new evidence about a plan by Connor to have Shuttlesworth assassinated. Under Connor’s orders, Detective Tom Cook

Retired Marine’s Life Told Story of Dignity of Man

The few, the proud, the father who stamps his family with a purpose

By DAVID LAUDERDALE
DLauderdale@IslandPacket.com
843-706-8115
Published Saturday, September 22, 2012

Retired Gunnery Sergeant LaSalle R. Vaughn in his U.S. Marine Corps uniform at the funeral of his best friend and next-door-neighbor, retired Marine Master Sergeant Frederick Drake, in November 2010. Both were Montford Point Marines.

LaSalle R. Vaughn was a Marine gunnery sergeant whose eyes could bore into you like a nail, and whose body was still taut as new rope when he died last Sunday at 88.

But everyone talks about his cinnamon rolls. Their sweet aroma would pull children into his kitchen from all over Sergeants Drive in Port Royal.

In 1943 he joined a U.S. Marine Corps that didn’t really want the feisty half African-American, half Native American from Baton Rouge, La. But he’d seen the sharp uniform with a red stripe down blue pants, and he insisted on joining the Marines.

His vision of what it would be like changed quickly when he was sent to the segregated boot camp for African-Americans at Montford Point, outside Camp Lejeune, N.C.

He was immensely proud to have served more than two decades. He was a steward and chef to seven generals, even preparing a meal for a U.S. president. But he said paving the road to integration was hell.

The Rev. James E. Moore, pastor of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Dale and national chaplain of the Montford Point Marine Association, said: “I am convinced that had they failed — and there were many people who felt they would fail and wanted them to fail — I would not have been the first black sergeant major of the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island and Eastern Recruiting Region. I attribute that to what they went through and what they endured.”

Montford Point Marines were honored in June with the Congressional Gold Medal.

But it’s the corps within Vaughn’s own home — his fatherhood — that should be talked about most during his final salute.

STRONG MEN

“Lord knows we need in our society today positive examples of strong men who accept the responsibility to be the people we were created to be,” said Moore. “And when I say that, I mean first being fathers. I think fatherhood has been diminished in our society.”

LaSalle and Catherine Vaughn — who would have been married 66 years in December — had five boys and two girls.

The oldest, LaSalle II, is a retired Air Force officer who