The Curious Case of the Bowers Museum KKK Tree

• Yes you just an ignorant Mexican, Learn to read English and the you might understand our English. First of All you are a ignorant Mexican and don't understand a Southerner's heart because if you did you would still feel the pang of what Sherman did to our people. And even we are one Nation now we are still two separate countries still in our Southern heart.

• Apparently Keith is smoking some shit out of a glass pipe.

• Dear Gustavo Arellano. First get your facts straight. There is no Gadsden Ga. There is one in Etowah County in Alabama. All you ever hear is bad things about the KKK. There are some good things. In the early days there were not many lawmen. In some ares there were groups of men who enforced rules of civilized conduct. The KKK was on of these groups. If a man was beating his wife, the Klan would often drop by and punish him so he would stop his bad behavior. If someone was needy they would come to their aid with cash ,Black or White. Most , if not all good things the KKK did has been overlooked by the PC media.They were first assembled because the US Government was occupying the South and causing disruption to the fine people who lived there. The KKK made their hostile actions ( the governments)a cause for the oppressed people of the South. If you want to read more and see more actual truth about the KKK. go to www.kkklan.com/various.htm. Mexico has no room to talk about the US. It has become the anus of the Americas. It has always been corrupt and now is ran by the Drug traffickers and corrupt politicians. The boil in the pretty of The Americas will soon pop and ooze across our borders. Will groups of Americans such as the KKK come to save us from the invasion of Child molesters, rapists , thieves, criminals and trash that come to our country illegally? God, I hope someone does!

• Except...most of OC's Civil War vets either were proud members of the KKK or lionized the Klan. And who, exactly, is espousing propaganda about the South's reasons for fighting? Those scalawag Northern carpetbaggers? Last I checked, Jefferson Davis didn't free the slaves, no matter the reasons behind it.

• Referring to your comment "Why would anyone want to say with pride their ancestors were Gray unless they're at ease with racism". Gustavo don't fall for the propaganda. Most Americans are not educated on the real causes of the civil war. I'm not saying that some of them were not racistas, but to generalize them is wrong. There was Hispanics, Indians (feather), and even Blacks and Jews who fought for the South. They all had there reasons for doing so. Not all the Blacks were forced to fight or promised freedom if they did, but they chose to do it anyway. When someone attacks your homeland you defend it. Plus the North (currently the USA) was not much better. They didn't free slaves or allow them to fight until a couple years after the war and they didn't even allow the negritos to fight unless it was in segregated units. I don't think the North was any better. As a matter of fact the only reason "Honest Abe" emancipated the slaves was to try and crumble the South's economy. Even after the war how much better were any of these ethnic groups treated. We would all have to wait another 100 years before things started to get a little better. otroSantanero

• An interesting find Gustavo. It's unfortunate though that a plaque is placed on the grounds of a museum and yet you have to do your own digging to find the history behind the organization that put it there! And while we are speaking of heritage, it seems to me by your work criticizing local histories that the confederate/klan past in OC is subject to many convenient omissions. If it's heritage and there's nothing wrong with it, better be proud of it loud and in public. If not, then we're talking about something else entirely...which we are! C'mon, let's research why Savanna HS has Johnny Rebel in the middle of the confederate colored school. There has to be some old school board/klan connection there...

• I'm only 1/4 Mexican, but I'm also 1/4 (Native American) Indian and I can't figure out this whole affection for the Confederacy-past thing either. I lived in Texas (Austin) for a year and I kept hearing how good Tex-Mex cooking is and ... forget it, much better stuff in California. But I digress. That being said, I'm not so much for removing the old plaque as putting up a new, additional one ... y'know, sort of a "Read More About It" thing for trees, maybe. It's cool knowing the entire story, so the more we can make it possible for people to LEARN what this is all about, is great. Sure, people can look all this stuff up -- but they won't, we're all lazy and selfish and don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. So definitely we need another plaque to show ... the rest of the story.

• Yes, that was what I was trying to write regarding the word heritage, but it didn't come across very well. I agree with your clarification of the word and what we do with it is the point. This history is embarrassing, but it can't be erased or chopped down like a tree. Keeping the plaque up keeps their memory alive, but when you blog about it like you have and community members read about the deeper history, then its meaning changes. Those who know can read the plaque and instead of thinking "Oh, how nice of them to plant this tree" they can think "Your planing this tree only reminds me of how incredibly wrong you all were and reinforces the direction I want to see my community continue in." I'm an eternal optimist at heart, but I think it could happen.

• I also appreciate your point, Dre, but that's the same argument Confederate freaks use in arguing to keep the Stars and Bars over state capitals, or to honor Klan members like Forrest or Head. It's important to make sure that our racist past is never forgotten, but to keep the Emma Sansom plaque up--especially in light of what she represented to the Daughters of Confederacy--is pretty embarrassing. I will disagree with you on your opinion of heritage. Heritage <i>can</i> be positive or negative. It's what we do with it in the here and now--whether criticize portions of our past or justify them--that's important.

• I get your point. But I wonder...if the tree and plaque weren't there, how would we know the history? Well, we can read about it in the history books (or in your blog), but if the tree wasn't there, you would have never blogged about it and I wouldn't have known about O.C.'s connection to the KKK. Even when it's about our slavery/racist past, I appreciate seeing it with my own eyes. I fear when there are no physical remnants of our society's past, the history is more easily lost. Especially in today's culture where we've become such visual people. Yes, the tree was planted well after the civil war (so it doesn't have direct historical ties to that time period), but I see it more of a testament of the time during which it was planted. I read your post and am reminded of the way things used to be and can compare it to today's climate. Is it the same? Have things changed? Does the mentality still persist only with different players? It is heritage; we've inherited this tree from the ancestors of our society. Heritage is neither exclusively negative nor positive. And I don't think you're an ignorant Mexican either. See ya at your book reading at the Yost Theater!!!

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