STANDING UP FOR JACKSON IN THE VALLEY

September 22, 205

Dear Ms. Lunelle,

At the suggestion of Commander Jim Kennedy of the Rutherford Rifle Camp Sons of Confederate Veterans, I made my way to the Town of Ellenboro, North Carolina. I would find myself in the midst of a people who had shown the propensity to love each other as they had loved a man who had don the Confederate soldiers garb and accepted his beliefs in conforming to the social and cultural expectations that brought them together as one as I had done each of the last five years to an event so named the Ellenboro Town Fair. Unfortunately, I was not feeling well.

With my thoughts on “what’s next?” it occurred to me, “General Thomas Stonewall Jackson.” I remembered Julian Bond speaking to a group of students, staff, and members of the public about the acronym NAACP. The” C” stood for people of “all colors”, he said. However, the more he talked, the more bigoted and hypocritical he sounded as he spoke about White people.

What’s next? Here we are in the 21st century talking about the Court case garnered by the NAACP in the Shenandoah Valley to change the name of a School named after an Angel of God sent to help Black people with their greatest adventure towards not only the hour of social vertical mobility because Jackson and his wife would teach them how to read and write when a White man could be hung for doing so. However, he taught them how to read the Christian Bible and where he would find the Almighty God.

For me, they could have named everything in the school for Jackson, the Jackson School Board, the Jackson Restroom.