April is Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, and April 24 is Confederate Memorial Day in Mississippi.
I generally ignore them both. They are, at best, absurd and, at worst, an ugly reminder of when we were at our absolute worst as a people.
Why on earth would we single out and venerate one four-year period out of our 210-year history as a state? You would think we, as a people, would have achieved something that served humanity rather than degrade that we could single out and celebrate.
Maybe it’s because 15,000 Mississippians died fighting for the Confederacy. If that’s the basis for those commemorations, I’m going to assume that at some point Mississippi is going to celebrate COVID-19 Heritage Month and have COVID-19 Memorial Day to acknowledge the 13,419 Mississippians who have died in the pandemic so far.
Social media mentions of Confederate Heritage Month have been mostly negative, but I ran across one Mississippian on Twitter who said he liked the idea. He said his kin fought and died for the Confederacy and that many of the Black residents near his family’s pre-Civil War plantation bear his family’s name, something he said Black and white folks alike find amusing. He said the plantation remains in his family’s possession and employs Black folks whose ancestors were his family’s slaves. They seem quite happy working there, and he said none of those folks hold his family’s history as slave-owning Confederates against him. One of them had even managed to ascend to the lofty position as bookkeeper in the family business, he mentioned proudly.
That’s the problem with those who support the idea of honoring Confederate “heritage” and memorializing the Confederate dead.
They seem to ignore what the Confederacy meant to Black Mississippians and gloss over the inhumanity of human bondage. They will concede that slaves were horribly treated and forced to live like livestock, just not their family’s slaves. No, somehow their slaves were treated wonderfully, you know, almost like a favorite pet. That was the end of the conversation.
About a decade ago, a cousin spent considerable time exploring our family history on my father’s side. She was able to trace our family as far back as 1694 to the birth of John Dunham in South Carolina, my grandfather seven times over.
That history is filled with the names of dozens and dozens of my relatives.
But there were also names in my family history that I assume were of no blood relation who were listed in John Dunham’s Last Will and Testament, which was executed upon his death on Feb. 4, 1727.
Their names were Scipio, Prince, Jack, Hector, Mingo, Adam, George, Jenny, Pompey, Gloster, Maria, Flora, Diana and her infant daughter, Rose.
They were the enslaved Black men, women and children distributed along with John Dunham’s other possessions — acreage, buildings, livestock, farm implements, furniture, et al — to his widow and four children.
If I’m going to consider my “Confederate Heritage” it must include the names of these 14 human beings, all of whom lived and died as slaves, along with who knows how many of their descendants.
Enoch Dunham, John Dunham’s great-great-grandson and my 4x grandfather, died to maintain that “family tradition” at Lovejoy Station, Georgia, during the siege of Atlanta on Sept. 24, 1864. A wasted life in a terrible cause.
He was only 37. He left behind a widow and three daughters, ages 12, 11 and 7 to scrap out a living in Tippah County, Mississippi. His death ushered in generational poverty. It would take five generations before the family produced a college graduate.
I think of those 14 names in John Dunham’s will and wonder if there are people living today who have managed to trace their family back to any of those 14 slaves
If so, and if I ever have the opportunity to meet them, I will apologize on my family’s behalf and assure them that our family has long since repented of the evil of slavery and that we are trying to do better.
One small evidence of that good will is that we reject Confederate Heritage Month and Confederate Memorial Day.
It’s a shame there are other Mississippians — including Gov. Tate Reeves — who cannot bring themselves to do even that.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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