“Monument to Civil War general, Ku Klux Klan leader triggers controversy

Taken from: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/22/13415785-monument-to-civil-war-general-ku-klux-klan-leader-triggers-controversy?lite

August 22, 2012

The renovation of a monument honoring a Civil War Confederate general, who was the first “Grand Wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan, is once more creating controversy in Selma, Ala., 11 years after protesters got it moved off of public property.

The memorial is being repaired after the bust of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was stolen in March from the 7-foot-tall granite monument it rested upon at a cemetery in Selma, reported The Birmingham News. A group known as the Friends of Forrest are replacing it, according to local media; and the United Daughters of the Confederacy are adding a pedestal and fencing to make it harder to steal, Selma City Council President Dr. Cecil Williamson told NBC News.

“I would recommend this man (Forrest) for any young people to model his life after,” Todd Kiscaden, of Friends of Forrest, told local NBC affiliate WSFA 12 News. “The man always led from the front. He did what he said he was going to do. He took care of his people, and his people included both races.”

Not everyone remembers the general that way.

Though Forrest was one of the Confederacy’s better generals and their best cavalry leader, he was an “extreme racist,” Mark Pitcavage, an expert of military history and right-wing extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, told NBC News.

Renovations on an Alabama monument honoring the Ku Klux Klan’s founder has sparked outrage from critics who are pushing to stop the expansion. WSFA’s Samuel King reports.

Men under his command killed “in cold blood” 250 black soldiers fighting for the Union who were captured at Fort Pillow in Tennessee, Pitcavage said. “No one has ever proven conclusively that Forrest himself ordered it, but at the very least this was the sort of thing he was letting his men do,” he added. A federal congressional committee investigating the April 12, 1864, killings received testimony that as many as 200 black soldiers were slain after they surrendered at Fort Pillow.

“Here’s a man who killed African-Americans who had surrendered, who were not a threat to anybody,” Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, told WSFA. “And yet we are talking about a monument to him.”

Forrest, a slave owner and a slave trader, was tapped to be the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard – or supreme leader, the KKK’s highest position — at a meeting in April 1867, according to Pitcavage and the Anti-Defamation League. “Although he was the titular head of the entire Ku Klux Klan, in practice he didn’t have much influence beyond Tennessee. It’s not like the Internet was there and he could give guidance to all of his followers across the country,” Pitcavage said.

The Klan was “unbelievably violent,” killing many people and burning down schools and churches, leading Forrest to disband it in 1868 because the Grant administration decided to send federal troops to the South to maintain public order, Pitcavage said.

“All he (Forrest) did was issue a formal order for appearance’s sake, knowing that the Klan was not going to disappear and the Klan did not disappear. It continued full force for a number of years, but he was no longer officially its head after that point,” he said.

The first monument to Forrest was put up on city property in October 2000 under the permission of the local government administration in power at the time. People dumped trashed on it and held a mock lynching, tying rope around it in protest, Williamson said. With a new mayor in office and “such a public outcry from parts of the community about it being on public property,” the city council voted to move it in 2001, he added.

The new site is on an acre of land donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1877, said Williamson, adding that he believed the group was in control of the lot. NBC News’ efforts to reach the group for comment were not successful.

“Once it was moved it had just basically been sitting out there for the past 11 years undisturbed until the bust was stolen,” Williamson said. “It was like most people in town did not know or did not care that it was even out in the cemetery.”

But, Malika Sanders-Fortier, who described herself as a community leader in Selma, has started apetition calling for the city council to remove the monument. ”Monuments celebrating violent racism and intolerance have no place in this country, let alone in a city like Selma, where the families of those attacked by the Klan still live,” she wrote in her petition, which had collected more than 15,000 signatures as of Wednesday.

But Williamson said it wasn’t a city matter, noting the monument didn’t belong to the local government, and that, as far as he knew, it was not on city property.

“Ivy League school janitor graduates with honors”

Taken from: http://news.yahoo.com/ivy-league-school-janitor-graduates-honors-182936684.html

May 13, 2012

For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out trash at Columbia University.

A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he eked out a living working for the Ivy League school. But Sunday was payback time: The 52-year-old janitor donned a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in classics.

As a Columbia employee, he didn’t have to pay for the classes he took. His favorite subject was the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca, the janitor said during a break from his work at Lerner Hall, the student union building he cleans. ”I love Seneca’s letters because they’re written in the spirit in which I was educated in my family — not to look for fame and fortune, but to have a simple, honest, honorable life,” he said.

His graduation with honors capped a dozen years of studies, including readings in ancient Latin and Greek.

“This is a man with great pride, whether he’s doing custodial work or academics,” said Peter Awn, dean of Columbia’s School of General Studies and professor of Islamic studies. “He is immensely humble and grateful, but he’s one individual who makes his own future.”

Filipaj was accepted at Columbia after first learning English; his mother tongue is Albanian.

For Filipaj, the degree comes after years of studying late into the night in his Bronx apartment, where he’d open his books after a 2:30-11 p.m. shift as a “heavy cleaner” — his job title. Before exam time or to finish a paper, he’d pull all-nighters, then go to class in the morning and then to work.

On Sunday morning in the sun-drenched grassy quad of Columbia’s Manhattan campus, Filipaj flashed a huge smile and a thumbs-up as he walked off the podium after a handshake from Columbia President Lee Bollinger. Later, Filipaj got a big hug from his boss, Donald Schlosser, Columbia’s assistant vice president for campus operations.

Bollinger presided over a ceremony in which General Studies students received their graduation certificates. They also can attend Wednesday’s commencement of all Columbia graduates, most of whom are in their 20s.

Filipaj wasn’t much older in 1992 when he left Montenegro, then a Yugoslav republic facing a brutal civil war.

An ethnic Albanian and Roman Catholic, he left his family farm in the tiny village of Donja Klezna outside the city of Ulcinj because he was about to be drafted into the Yugoslav army led by Serbs, who considered many Albanians their enemy. He fled after almost finishing law school in Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s capital, where he commuted for years by train from Montenegro.

At first in New York, his uncle in the Bronx offered him shelter while he worked as a restaurant busboy. ”I asked people, which are the best schools in New York?” he says. Since Columbia topped his list, “I went there to see if I could get a job.” Part of his $22-an-hour janitor’s pay still goes back to his brother, sister-in-law and two kids in Montenegro. Filipaj has no computer, but he bought one for the family, whose income comes mostly from selling milk. Filipaj also saves by not paying for a cellphone; he can only be reached via landline.

He wishes his father were alive to enjoy his achievement. The elder Filipaj died in April, and the son flew over for the funeral, returning three days later for work and classes.

To relax at home, he enjoys an occasional cigarette and some “grappa” brandy. ”And if I have too much, I just go to sleep,” he says, laughing.

During an interview with The Associated Press in a Lerner Hall conference room, Filipaj didn’t show the slightest regret or bitterness about his tough life. Instead, he cheerfully described encounters with surprised younger students who wonder why their classmate is cleaning up after them. ”They say, ‘Aren’t you…?’” he said with a grin.

His ambition is to get a master’s degree, maybe even a Ph.D., in Roman and Greek classics. Someday, he hopes to become a teacher, while translating his favorite classics into Albanian. For now, he’s trying to get “a better job,” maybe as supervisor of custodians or something similar, at Columbia if possible.

He’s not interested in furthering his studies to make more money. ”The richness is in me, in my heart and in my head, not in my pockets,” said Filipaj, who is now an American citizen.

Soon after, the feisty, 5-foot-4 janitor picked up a broom and dustpan and went back to work.

“Long-lost identities of slaves uncovered in old Virginia papers”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/05/us/virginia-slaves/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

February 5, 2012

A historical society in Virginia, where slavery began in the American colonies in 1619, has discovered the identities of 3,200 slaves from unpublished private documents, providing new information for today’s descendants in a first-of-its-kind online database, society officials say.

Many of the slaves had been forgotten to the world until the Virginia Historical Society received a $100,000 grant to pore over some of its 8 million unpublished manuscripts — letters, diaries, ledgers, books and farm documents from Virginians dating to the 1600s — and began discovering the long-lost identities of the slaves, said society president and CEO Paul Levengood.

The private, nonprofit historical society, the fourth-oldest in the nation, is assembling a growing roster of slaves’ names and other information, such as the slaves’ occupations, locations and plantation owners’ names, said Levengood.

The free, public website also provides a high-resolution copy of the antique documents that identify the slave.

The database, which went online last September with 1,500 names, sets itself apart from the few other existing slave databases — which limit themselves to specific plantations or to ship manifests that list the captives by their native African names, society officials said.

The “Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names” website is the first online resource listing slaves’ names across all of slaveholding Virginia, the nation’s oldest state which had the largest enslaved population, numbering a half million people, at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, society officials said. ”Most slaves were by their owners’ design and eventually by law forbidden to learn how to read and write, so they didn’t leave us material that so many figures in the past did,” Levengood said. “That’s when you have to be creative.”

So using a $100,000 corporate grant from Dominion, one of the nation’s largest producers and transporters of energy, society researchers began examining some of its 8 million manuscripts that Virginia residents have been giving to the historical society since its founding in 1831.

Those Virginia families found the old, handwritten papers in attics, basements or desk drawers, Levengood said. The society stores the documents in an archive spanning thousands of square feet, he said. The antique papers turned out to mention slaves. ”Often they appeared in the records of the owners who owned slaves as human property, which to us sounds so obscene and alien,” said Levengood, who’s also a historian. “But these people were writing down their inventory as if you would for insurance purposes. That’s the kind of things that owners did with slaves. This was the most valuable property they owned, and they wanted to make sure it was recorded. ”Often there was a human connection, and they grew up with these people, and they recorded their birth dates and deaths. It’s an incredibly complicated and tragic institution that we’re just beginning to understand the dimensions of,” Levengood said.

Documents citing slaves go back to the 1690s: “That’s when slavery starts to grow fast in Virginia and other English colonies,” Levengood said. ”Sometimes it’s a real detective work. You have to read between the lines: Oh, they mention Amy in a letter, and then you have to read another letter in the collection to realize that Amy is a slave and not a family member,” Levengood said.

The society Saturday held the first of four community workshops on how to use the online database at the organization’s headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. While the online website is intuitive on how to use, the workshops are being held for users who need more guidance, Levengood said. Some 80 people came to Saturday’s workshop, including Gale Carter, a high school history teacher who flew in from East Chicago, Indiana for the event. Carter said the original documents digitized on the site will help her uncover more of her own family’s history in Virginia, as well as help her students learn about the era. ”I’m going to use this not only personally, but professionally,” she said. “This is terrific. It’s a model and I hope the rest of the states catch up real quickly.”

Amateur genealogist Crasty Johnson of Richmond said she hopes the sites will help her trace her roots back to the 1800s. ”I need to know my history,” she said, adding the site may help her prove or disprove many of the things she’s heard about her family’s past. “I wanted to really know. I wanted to be able to see and connect the dots.”

When the United States banned the importation of slaves after 1807, Virginia became the largest provider in the nation’s internal slave trade, Levengood said. Slavery was eventually abolished at the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865.

That means many American families with slave ancestors could have roots in Virginia, Levengood said. ”Slavery in Virginia is not just a Virginia story. It reaches across all of the slave South,” Levengood said. “So you may not know you have Virginia ancestors, but you could.”

The database features a public message board, filled with notes posted by users searching for ancestors who may have been slaves. The advanced search fields include the slave’s first name or last name; gender; occupation; owner’s last name; date range; and record type.

One user named “Treebranch02″ wrote last September: “Well, I think I found the slave owner that owned my great, great, great grandfather but that is as far as I got. Nothing on my great grandfather and great grandmother who lived in Manquin, VA. This was good for me, however. Got me excited. Wonderful site.”

Elsewhere in the database is a stark description of the sale of slaves and goods in a February 11, 1858, typed letter from slaveholder William Daniel Cabell of “Benvenue” in Nelson County, Virginia, to his wife, Elizabeth Nicholas Cabell. ”The corn we sold yesterday brought 3.15$ per barrel. We sold all the negros 43 in number at astonishingly large prices — the whole amounting to $32016. Nearly every one of the negros were satisfied as they were bought by people in the country mostly, going ahead of the prices given by the traders,” Cabell wrote his wife. The letter continued: “Jane and three children brought $2795. and Mimy and three children $2505. My father gave $25. to Mr. Agee and then allowed Mr. Turner to take Mimy as he owned her husband. Old Mr. S. Turner bought Jane and children. Jane’s husband exclaimed just as she was knocked out to his master “Glory to God on high, peace and good will to men on earth” and it seemed to pop from his very soul. Betsy brought $1400. and was bought for Miss Perking of Buckingham.”

Robert Payne, who attended Saturday’s workshop, said he’s been researching his family for the past 15 years, but finding information about his ancestors wasn’t easy. He’s hoping his 12 grandchildren can benefit from his work. ”Researching black folk is difficult, so anytime you can find a new resource it’s always good to investigate,” he said. “It’s a database for the ones that are coming up. They’ll be able to take it and grow from that.”

“Bombs dropped near South Sudan refugee camp”

Taken from: http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/10/world/africa/south-sudan-bombing/index.html?hpt=wo_bn7

November 11, 2011

(CNN) – At least two bombs were dropped near the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan, resulting in an undetermined number of casualties, the spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday. ”We are very concerned that these bombs were dropped in an area where there are thousands of refugees who have gathered after fleeing the violence in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states,” the spokesperson said in a statement. ”It is essential that both parties immediately take all steps to protect civilian lives.”

In Washington, the office of the White House press secretary said in a statement that the United States “strongly condemns the aerial bombardment by the Sudan Armed Forces of the town of Yida,” where more than 20,000 refugees who have fled conflict in the Sudanese state of Southern Kordofan are living.

The Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile State and Nuba Mountain regions straddle Sudan and South Sudan’s geographical and political lines. Although these territories are geographically part of Sudan, its population has faced “exclusion, marginalization and discriminatory practices that have resulted in their opposition to the Sudanese government,” according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. ”This bombing of civilians and humanitarian workers is an outrageous act, and those responsible must be held accountable for their actions,” the statement said. The attack follows other bombardments by the Sudan Armed Forces on November 8 near the border that increase the potential for confrontation between Sudan and South Sudan, it said. ”The United States demands the Government of Sudan halt aerial bombardments immediately,” the statement said. “We urge the Government of South Sudan to exercise restraint in responding to this provocation to prevent further escalation of hostilities.”

It called for a resumption of negotiations by the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.

President H.E. Saliva Kiir Mayardit has said he will not support armed opposition forces fighting against the government of Sudan, the South Sudan government website said. Kiir said Sudan was threatening the sovereignty of South Sudan “through military invasion.”

Liberation army members have clashed with the military of South Sudan, which separated from Sudan and became independent in July. Led by former officers of the southern army that fought neighboring Sudan in a 22-year civil war, the militias have taken up arms against their former comrades and become a challenge for the world’s newest nation.

“Ex-Guatemala General Sent to Prison for Genocide Case”

Taken from: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/10/14/ex-guatemala-general-sent-to-prison-for-genocide-case/#ixzz1apXN6IF0

October 14, 2011

Guatemalan prosecutors have arrested another former army general who was allegedly involved in dozens of massacres of indigenous people during the Central American nation’s civil war.

According to Siglo21, judge Patricia Flores, ordered prison to former Gen. Mauricio Rodriguez for genocide charges and crimes against humanity. Rodriguez headed the feared G-2 military intelligence force in 1982 and 1983. A truth commission found the G-2 may have participated in as many as 71 operations against civilians.

General Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, the first former military arrested in this case, could stand trial on genocide charges involving alleged massacres. Lopez was arrested in June and is the first person in Guatemala to face genocide charges.