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An open letter / Jacqueline Duty

Today as began I to study and read the some of the proposed expert
testimony for the Russell Independent Board of Education , I became
less impressed with the declaration of Gerald L. Smith , Ph.D. and
the assertion that his opinions were based on more than fifteen
years as a professional historian. I have come to know that most
of these Government educated professionals have had their educational
processes some what tainted by Northern teachings that only glorify
the conqueror of my Southland. It is very easy to go into the body
politic and pick out particular incidents, either good or bad, and
pass them off as the rule of the day. Picking out bad things and
highlighting them as the norm is how Northern propaganda works.

Some of what Mr.. Smith asserts may have merit, but again becomes
more tainted because of all those things he left out . My mom always
taught her children the fact for every reaction, there is an equal
an opposite reaction. Mr.. Smith speaks of the Klan, but like too
many others of his thinking, he never speaks of the Union or Loyal
Leagues . He speaks of the Slave Chronicles, but never about how
so much of those chronicles were changed and tampered with by Northern
Abolitionist with the sanction of the Federal Government, because
they did not want the world to hear of the love between this man
that had been a slave and the man he called Master. He speaks of
the turbulent civil rights period, but fails to mention that had
it not been for all those things that the federal government of
the North instituted and sanctioned ; starting with John Brown’s
raid at Harpers ferry whose first victim was an African, and leading
up to all the kinds of atrocities committed during the so call period
of Reconstruction designed to separate the White and Black man of
the South at a time when the Christian White folks of the South
were ready to do all things right by that Black man who so many
of them had began to call family; we as Southern Black folks would
never have had to endure.

How can anyone expect me to act as a free man if I do not respect
the letter of the law. Under the Constitution of the United States
of America , slavery was legal , and many a free black man argued
for the maintenance of the economic institution of slavery. Mans
inhumanity to man has no racial, religious, or political boundaries.
For Mr.. Smith or anyone like him who has been educated in the environment
of Northern revisionism, to assert that there was some noble cause
fought in this land by Northerners for the liberation of Southern
Blacks or Northern far that matter, is pure poppycock. I can only
remind him of an old wise Southern saying; the pot can’t call the
kettle black. If now we are ridding ourselves of symbols that have
offensive nature based on facts, then don’t leave out the Stars
and Stripes. Let’s rid ourselves of it also and start all over.
I can only conclude that the way we are heading in this political
environment , the day will come very soon when this will become
an issue.

While my name does not carry the credentials of Ph.D; I have walked
down the highways traveled by some of the nations most prominent
civil rights leaders carrying the Southern Cross, dressed in the
uniform of the honorable Confederate soldier, confabulating with
the people all the way. I have heard their stories, witnessed their
love for a flag that their ancestors earned a place of honor and
dignity under, felt the pain they too have felt for trying to express
a truth that has forever been suppressed in the annals of historical
lore, understand the paid off poverty pimps who enrich themselves
by promoting a hate that would never be or have been had it not
been for criminal and ruthless acts of the Northern sponsored agents
during reconstruction, and now as they are bent on making Blacks
in the South do what no slave or freedman loyal to his family and
homeland do ; become a traitor.

I invite Mr..Smith and his kind to view the historical March Across
Dixie Tapes , and the photographs taken of this journey by Terry
Lee Edgerton, and try and deny what he sees and hears from people
of the South who look like him, yet call themselves Southern.

HK Edgerton