Dear Editor:
I am writing to you regarding the article of March 8, 2001, by Patrick Fessenbecker entitled “Sports has purposes other than entertaining show.” I would first like to agree with him in all the progress that our society has made to be multiracial. We have come a long way and need to continue the progress.
However, I disagree with him on keeping our Southern heritage. I would like to find out how much history he studied in school to make a connection between the Confederate States of America which ended in 1865 and the Third Reich which started in the 1930s in Germany.
I do not know of any Confederate that aided Hitler in his rise to power. Mr. Fessenbecker should stick to covering just sports until he understands more about history.
There is a disturbing trend now to sanitize our history and I believe Mr. Fessenbecker was just trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Efforts are being made to remove memorials over the country that are to honor those who served the Confederacy. It is a crime to dismiss their sacrifice and suffering.
As a Union Civil War re-enactor, I in a small part understand what each side went through. Some have pinned the rebel soldier as a racist because he chose to serve his state.
Gen. Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery but he felt he needed to serve his home state of Virginia. In East Tennessee there were slaveholders who were Unionist and joined the Union Army.
If we examine closely we would find many so-called racists who fought in the Union Army. I have read Andrew Johnson federal governor of Tennessee and later Lincoln’s vice president was a slaveholder. The vast majority of Union soldiers joined to preserve the union, not to free the slaves.
The average Confederate soldier back then was a poor farmer and was not able to afford to buy a slave.
To make a comparison, how many of us drive a brand new Corvette, BMW or Mercedes? If one looks at the price of a slave then in 1860s and takes the value of the money today, one could go out and buy one of those cars.
To wonder why the rebel soldier was fighting is summed up in this story.
A Union soldier asked a Confederate why he was fighting. The Confederate replied, “Because you are down here.”
Was the Confederacy going to keep slavery?
I found out something interesting. There were two articles in the constitution of the Confederacy of which I was not aware. One article banned the importation of slaves. The second said after the current generation of slaves had passed away their children were to be free citizens.
If we remove these memorials we are also insulting Native Americans who fought for the Confederacy (There were Cherokees in our area of Northeast Tennessee who served the Confederacy.)
Yes, there were a few African-Americans who did serve in the Confederate Army, but not as soldiers. After the war the state of Tennessee awarded pensions to over 200 African-Americans who were in the Confederate Army.
I don’t have a say-so to where the Southern Conference holds its basketball tournament but it seems to me a the flag is a poor reason not to hold it in South Carolina.
The South Carolina state legislators made a good compromise to take the flag down and to put it up by the statue. Who are we to say that was not proper?
Some are upset because they think the Confederate is racist and insulting. They don’t think there are two other flags flying which one could argue are racist too – the South Carolina state flag and the U.S. flag.
Under the U.S. flag, which is also carried by hate groups, we massacred innocent Native American men, women and children in places like Wounded Knee and sent then to live on reservations because they were not white.
Recently, we put Japanese- Americans to live in camps during World War II because of their race.
That, to me, sounds like what the Nazis did to people of other races and beliefs. Which flag is to be judged not to be a racist symbol?
Maybe they could consider holding the tournament in Canada.
It seemed, in the article, Mr. Fessenbecker wanted to remove our Southern heritage. I wonder if he is for taking away our literature, art, culture, and music as well as our history of the South?
If we start removing Confederate memorials because someone says they is not proper, where will it end? Do we start taking down all the markers at places like Gettysburg because they were put up to honor Confederates?
Can you imagine years from now someone going to Gettysburg and trying to figure out who the Army of the Potomac was fighting because they erased the traces of the Confederates? Would ETSU remove the symbol of a pirate mascot (and find something else) because in reality pirates were nothing but criminals, thieves and murders?
Where will this end?
Steve Herron

Author