What's at issue is the brutal institution of slavery imposed on black people by southern ancestors of the south. Slavery was designed, implemented and preserved to the death by the south for hundreds of years and yet is nowhere to be found in the proclamation. Nor is there any apology for the southern insurgents who took up arms against the United States of America one-hundred fifty years ago.
Keeping slavery out of the discussion of the Confederacy is like declaring "German Military History Month" and ignoring the Holocaust.
While the Governor of Virginia, (R) Bob McDonnell, did eventually apologize for failing to mention slavery in his Confederacy Day proclamation, the Governor of Mississippi considered an apology trivial, insignificant and in the classic language of the southern good-ole-boy, "a nit."
So I ask myself, should the Governors of Virginia and Mississippi apologize for not acknowledging the transgressions and seditious actions of their ancestors? I really haven't gotten past the fact that the United States Federal Government would allow a State of the Union to proclaim for itself an honorary day for participating in what today would be considered a Terrorist act of aggression against the United States.
I do wonder if somewhere in Germany there's a district, city or state that has an honorary day for Adolf Hitler, The Nazi Party or the Third Reich. You can bet somewhere in these southern United States there's a day honoring Confederacy president Jefferson Davis (1860-1865).
excerpts from Associated Press
by Emily Wagster Pettus
Jackson, Miss. - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour drew criticism for proclaiming April as Confederate Heritage Month without mentioning slavery, the second governor this month to come under fire for the omission.
Barbour's office did not respond to a request Monday for a copy of his 2010 Confederate Heritage Month proclamation.
Mississippi's declaration of secession before the Civil War said: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. ... Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization."
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-barbour-slavery-comment-nit.artapr14,0,4207163.story
