J.D.R. Hawkins

One bullet can make a man a hero… or a casualty.

Archive for the tag “Birmingham”

19 Jul 2018

Thankfully, Some Folks Still Have Sense

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It has been quite upsetting to see how many people have jumped on the politically correct bandwagon recently, and have strived to destroy or distort every Confederate monument, flag, or street sign in sight. But there is still hope that this trend will end, and hopefully, soon.

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CONFEDERATE MOTORCYCLES LIVES ON
The Confederate Motorcycles brand, thought to be abandoned by its rebranded owner Curtiss Motorcycles Inc., has been revived by venture capital fund Ernest Lee Capital and continues to manufacture high end motorcycles in Birmingham. The brand website has been updated with a number of new and pre-owned motorcycles and a story explaining plans to reintroduce new versions of the Confederate Hellcat, Fighter and Wraith.
After the rebranding from Confederate Motors Inc. to Curtiss Motorcycle Company, Inc., Ernest Lee Capital LLC announced that through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Confederate Motorcycles LLC, it has successfully acquired the intellectual property rights to the Confederate brands and designs. Confederate Motorcycles LLC immediately announced plans to continue to sell the last remaining Confederate P-51 Combat Fighters and FA-13 Combat Bombers and to begin production of its latest Confederate G3 Fighter immediately. The Confederate website also features a number of previously owned factory reconditioned Confederate motorcycles each with less than 500 miles on them.
“We are currently designing the next run of bikes that will each be available with a number of customer-selectable options,” said Ernest Lee. “We personally did not want to see the Confederate brand disappear into the ether.”
Lee believes the Confederate name is “no more synonymous with racism than is ‘Rebel’ or the Confederate Flag itself. We acknowledge that there are some that disagree with our viewpoint but felt that allowing individuals to discuss their differences of opinion is paramount to the democracy in which we all live. We want to continue that tradition at Confederate; building innovative and original bikes that draw crowds everywhere they ride.”
According to the Confederate Motorcycles Facebook Page, Confederate has plans to reintroduce an all new Confederate Hellcat next year, with a newly designed Confederate Wraith to follow thereafter.
(Article courtesy of Dixie Heritage Newsletter, July 13, 2018 ed.)
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30 Jan 2018

State of the Union

Tonight was President Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address. I was really hoping he would say something about all the destruction happening to Confederate monuments, as well as many other monuments. He did mention monuments of WWII vets, Lincoln, MLK, and others. Perhaps he will afford protection to all our monuments in the future.

Not only are Confederate monuments being attacked, but recently, a monument to our country’s national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, was attacked. It just keeps getting worse.

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A monument commemorating “Star-Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key was vandalized in downtown Baltimore, officials said Wednesday. Photographs show the monument, at 1200 N. Eutaw St., covered with red paint and the words “racist anthem” written in black.

Anthony McCarthy, a spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh (D), said police were investigating and determining the best way to remove the graffiti.

 

Remember that it was Mayor Pugh who secretly removed four Confederate monuments from downtown Baltimore this summer which has invited attacks on the city’s remaining monuments. The City’s statue of Christopher Columbus also being recently vandalized.
DA ENCOURAGES DISCONTENTS TO VANDALIZE MONUMENTS
Felony charges will be dropped against eight protesters accused of dismantling a Confederate statue in North Carolina last summer, Durham District Attorney Roger Echols said Thursday.

The prosecution has decided against pursuing felony charges against the defendants and will drop them in lieu of lesser counts, the district attorney told reporters. “I only plan to try them on the misdemeanors,” Mr. Echols told The Associated Press. He declined to comment further.
The eight defendants appeared before a judge Thursday and scheduled to face trial starting Feb. 19, the report said.

The case in Durham revolves around a monument of an anonymous Confederate soldier that had stood in front of the old county courthouse for nearly a century prior to being topped on August 14. , two days after a demonstration surrounding a different statue in Virginia turn
Prosecutors initially charged 12 people in connection with toppling the monument, but three of the accused were cleared in November, and a fourth entered a deferred prosecution agreement the following month.

Absent felony charges, the eight remaining defendants will only face misdemeanor counts of defacing a public building or monument, conspiracy to deface a public building or monument and injury to real property, Durham’s WRAL reported.
LAWSUIT FILED IN MEMPHIS
The family of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a petition Wednesday seeking legal action against the city of Memphis for its role in taking down three Confederate statues last month.

The petition, filed with the Tennessee Historical Commission, accuses the City and nonprofit Memphis Greenspace Inc. of violating “numerous” state laws on Dec. 20, when Greenspace removed the Forrest statue from its pedestal atop his and his wife’s graves in Health Sciences Park, and statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and war correspondent and Capt. J. Harvey Mathes from Fourth Bluff Park.

The petition asks the commission to rule that the city and Greenspace violated the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, which requires commission approval prior to removal of monuments from public property; laws against misconduct by elected officials; and laws prohibiting the desecration of gravesites.

“You can’t disturb graves,” said Sons’ attorney Doug Jones. “They knew that but conspired to rip it apart despite knowing state law. They ripped the top off the grave. They damaged that, and they can’t deny that.”

The city has maintained that the grave markers inscribed with the names of the Forrests remain at the base of the pedestal and that the statue wasn’t the headstone.

“The city has not been served with the lawsuit but I have reviewed it and remain confident all of our actions with regard to the sale of the parks and statues are legal,” said City Attorney Bruce McMullen.

City attorney Allan Wade didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment, and Mayor Jim Strickland’s communications team said he wasn’t available for an interview.

Separately, the Sons’ Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp 215 filed a lawsuit Thursday in Chancery Court in Davidson County seeking a temporary restraining order and an injunction to prevent the city or the nonprofit from selling or harming the stowed statues.

If granted, the restraining order and injunction would require court approval for any further actions related to the statues; their former homes, Health Sciences and Fourth Bluff parks; or the graves of the Forrests.

The petitioners included Forrest descendants listed in the petition were Walter Law Jr., Sidney Law, Brooks Bradley, Thoms Jesse Bradley III and Kevin Bradly, the “closest living relatives” of Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest.

The Sons also asked that the commission consider bringing official misconduct charges against city officials, who advised and assisted Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner as he created Greenspace and raised funds to buy and maintain the parks.

“They would like for this to be over,” Jones said. “But it’s not close to being over.”

LITIGATION ALSO PENDING IN ALABAMA
Jefferson County Circuit Judge Michael Graffeo has scheduled a hearing for April 13 on a state lawsuit challenging the City of Birmingham’s decision to shroud the stone obelisk of a Confederate monument in plywood.
The judge’s decision comes after the state attorney general’s office and the city filed a document agreeing to certain facts about the case. That includes the history of the 113-year-old memorial and its location in a downtown park.

The city built a plywood structure to hide inscriptions on the base of the monument amid national protests over Confederate memorials. The state filed suit claiming the move violates a new state law that bars the removal or alteration of historic monuments.

The Judge has ruled that the plywood structure can remain until the hearing.

(Courtesy of Dixie Heritage Newsletter, Jan. 19, 2018 ed.)
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24 Jul 2015

How Extremism Lead to Tragedy

Last Saturday, a rally in support of the Linn Park Confederate monument was held in Birmingham, Alabama. One of the speakers, Anthony Hervey, an avid supporter and writer who also happened to be black, was killed on Sunday while returning home to Oxford, Mississippi. According to Arlene Barnum, who was riding in the same vehicle with him, another vehicle pulled up beside them on the highway containing four or five young black men. They yelled and appeared to be angry. Hervey yelled back, but then lost control and crashed.

“It spun like crazy and we flipped, flipped, flipped. It was awful,” she said.

The Black Panthers are suspected as causing the fatal crash, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) are calling for a federal investigation into the matter. Not surprisingly, the story hasn’t been reported by any major news programs.

This tragedy isn’t enough to slow efforts by the NAACP to remove all things Confederate. Last night in San Antonio, Texas, workers removed what they thought were Confederate symbols from the Bexar County Courthouse just before midnight, following a unanimous vote taken yesterday by the commissioners’ court.

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However, in their haste, the workers failed to notice that one of the four plaques removed is actually an American Legion plaque. Therefore, Bexar County seems to be openly and willfully dishonoring all American veterans by their rash and dishonorable actions.

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San Antonio doesn’t have a problem with exploiting the Alamo for financial profit. I’m sure, if they tried hard enough, they could come up with something politically incorrect about this historic artifact as well. But instead, they chose to attack what they incorrectly perceived as Confederate symbols. The only plaque with a Confederate emblem on it is that of the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s (UDC) logo.

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