California Historical Society event announcement for tomorrow, Weds evening:

Siler tells the story of both the abolitionists who challenged the corrosive anti-Chinese prejudices of the time and the young women who dared to flee their fate. She relates how the women who ran the Cameron House defied contemporary convention by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked or by snatching them off ships as they were being smuggled in–and how they helped bring the exploiters to justice.

From the ingenious Tubman Stamp campaign:

The face of genocide may be gone even sooner than expected.

“We’re just thrilled that Andrew Jackson has had a removal of his own,” Hobbs said. “The constant reminder of Andrew Jackson being glorified is sad and sickening to our people.”

Given nearly 10 billion of these bills are in circulation (a jump from 5 billion just 20 years ago) someone might want to migrate him using machines instead of by hand…

Most Americans probably think of Memorial Day as a time for remembering all those who gave the ultimate sacrifice while serving in our armed forces. It was observed every year on May 30th from 1868 to 1970, and then became a federal holiday on the last Monday of May (as with today, the 27th).

Perhaps some wonder what Memorial Day was like before May 30, 1868? Obviously there were federal holidays and armed forces earlier so the answer is…it’s a trick question.

Nothing formal came before 1868 (unless you count things like blacks decorating graves of Union soldiers in 1865), because the day was established specifically to commemorate those who died to preserve the Union against an expansionist war of aggression started by pro-slavery “foreign” militants.

Unlike the federal Thanksgiving holiday established by President Lincoln in 1863, meant to bring Americans together, Memorial Day was to commemorate those who fought on one side.

Does that sound harsh? When I say there was aggression by “foreign” militants against America, I am speaking of those former Americans who openly renounced their citizenship in favor of using guns to perpetuate and expand westward the enslavement of humans.

We’re talking here about Americans who most decidedly fought against their own country, who wanted to perpetuate a King’s tyrannical precedent they believed was an inherited right from colonial-monarchist times (a false interpretation of history on their part, since the King’s corporations starting colonies were attempting to ban slavery, but that’s a post for another day).

All around the world by the late 1820s slavery was being widely abolished, including parts of America (in the great agrarian state of New York slavery was abolished on Independence Day, 4th of July 1827).

Yet some Americans simply could not give up a love of pre-1800s tyrannical practices and even chose to renounce their citizenship before they would renounce slavery. They set about in the 1830s silencing dissent and forcing slavery into new western territories. It was as if England’s 1833 Slavery Abolition Act didn’t mean anything to some in the former colonies, let alone England’s Slave Trade Act 1807 which made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire.

America no longer was within the British Empire, so it also came up with its own Act of Congress in 1807 that outlawed importation of slaves. That Act really targeted only three states (South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana), the ones that purposefully had undone a 1770s revolutionary American ban on importation of slaves.

Basically it was some hard-core American white supremacists who weren’t going to give up slaves. While so many other countries of the world were banning slavery, America was strangely engaged in harsh militant terror tactics, murdering those who even dared to speak about winding down human trafficking.

Lincoln in 1838 described the widespread fear and terror of being killed by slaveholder mobs:

Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.

A quick recap of what Lincoln was referring to:

• 1830 President Jackson starts interception of US Mail on the pretense of impounding any talk of abolition
• 1831 Nat Turner (slave) uprising leads to “reign of terror” by white supremacist militias
• 1833 England abolishes slavery
• 1836 Gag rule to deny Americans the right to even speak about abolition

And notably after Lincoln’s speech…

• 1843 Edgar Allen Poe writes incredibly popular “Gold Bug” book describing how to use encryption for secret communications
• 1844 Gag rules defeated after long campaign by former President Adams

I find a lot of people have no idea what conditions in America were like after the 1831 uprising and dark days of the Gag rules, so here’s an excerpt from slaveholders themselves describing widespread murder and torture of anyone black or caught speaking of abolition:

A final-ish tipping point to this condition came in 1859 when slaveholders believed their execution of openly abolitionist John Brown served as proof they could murder American citizens and face no real resistance, as long it was claimed slavery was being defended.

That assumption proved wildly false. Increasing numbers of Americans, particularly in Kansas, were now openly protesting slavery 30 years after the world had largely abandoned the practice…and so certain militant groups then chose to abandon America and start a war with it.

At this point everyone under threat of torture and murder by pro-slavery militants wandering unchecked around America had little choice but to rise up and defend self and their Union of states from what had become “foreign” forces.

Perhaps most famously foreign was General Lee, who went to West Point and then torched his American citizenship in order to prove a disastrous bumbling leader of enemy forces, and who never bothered to regain his papers. He died a relatively unpopular and isolated traitor to his country.

Lee’s epitaph probably should be here lies the man who advocated enslaving Americans when he wasn’t killing them, and late in life said he regretted the latter.

After the Civil War many white supremacists tried to hide their General (pun intended) ambition to perpetuate tyranny over country. Someone came up with catch phrases like “both sides”, used to passively argue how terrorists in America could be treated as equals to their victims.

This kind of dog-whistle not only is a page from history, it still can be found in fiction-based monument/attractions that have been erected by white supremacists, who
even go to the trouble of inventing Civil War battles that never happened:

Even to this day it thus is important to remember Memorial Day was established in 1868 for one side only: soldiers of the United States who sacrificed their lives to put to end 30 years of terrorism, by crushing a “rebellious tyranny”, winning the Civil War and emancipating slaves.

Anyone commemorating pro-slavery soldiers on American Memorial Day is basically asking to lay a wreath for its enemies, against a united and free nation.

Perhaps that sounds harsh, yet here is how it was phrased on May 5, 1868 in the original “Memorial Day Order: …the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

And a year later, Colonel Fisher’s Memorial Day speech gave “praise those who saved the nation…from greed of gain”

Those are the origins of Memorial Day.

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Things have changed quite a lot since then, clearly. So here are just a couple examples of attempts to change its meaning:

Woodrow Wilson restarted the KKK in 1916 under his “America First” Presidential campaign and then in 1919 gave a Memorial Day speech (his last speech ever) where he asks Americans to commemorate more than just the re-union of the country, setting a precedent to distract from its clear origins:

Eight years later in 1927 police were trying to block a tyranny-loving militant mob from violently disrupting/protesting a Memorial Day parade that was “dedicated to the soldier dead of the United States”.

Notably arrested was a 21-year old Fred Trump, for being among the nearly 1,000 black-shirted fascists and white-robed KKK who violently attacked 100 New York policemen.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has an interesting origin story that is basically 180 degrees from its current incarnation.

The NRA was founded 1871 to better prepare American freemen (e.g. emancipated slaves) for defense of their nation against rebellion and infringement of civil rights (e.g. white supremacists).

That’s right, it generally was thought (pun intended) after the Civil War ended that Americans needed training with rifles to defend the country against white supremacists, and by that I mean citizens defend self, communities and federal government from terrorists. US General Shaler had noticed that on average it took nearly 1K rifle shots to stop each enemy soldier during the Civil War.

A UCLA law professor tried to frame it like this in his 2011 Atlantic article called “The Secret History of Guns”:

Wingate and Church had fought for the North in the Civil War and been shocked by the poor shooting skills of city-bred Union soldiers.

Unfortunately the law professor gets it right (marksmanship was a concern), while also being wrong (it’s not about zip code, it’s about race).

This law professor makes many good points about the NRA from a legal standpoint. Here, for another example, is how he hammers on the lack of any real 2nd Amendment focus in the organization.

For most of its history, the NRA completely ignored the Second Amendment. If you go through old issues of the NRA’s signature publication, American Rifleman, from the 1940s and 1950s, you can read issue after issue without finding a single mention of the Second Amendment. The organization was focused on marksmanship and hunting, not shooting down gun control.

What I find lacking in legal perspectives on history such as this is any mention of NRA core principles. What was the organization meant to do, and what did it do within its first 20 years?

Imagine instead of 1950s…go way back to when the federal military was telling emancipated Americans to take up marksmanship and hunting with rifles, to better protect themselves because in doing so they were helping to protect their federal government from regression and rebellion.

That’s more what was really going on when the letters NRA first were put together.

From the start the NRA was “a roster of Union commanders” who had just defeated angry white men trying to destroy the federal government. Training emancipated blacks with marksmanship was seen as not only viable but logical course for America to preserve civil rights won as well as maintain the country’s national security.

General Grant in 1968 did not even have to campaign for President, he was so popular. He just stated that the federal government needed to preserve sacrifices of the war (that he had decisively won) by protecting Americans from racist militias and by preventing former rebellious militants from retaking power.

Look at these 1868 choices for President and take a wild guess which side created the NRA.

After the hugely popular Grant dominated the Presidential election, where 80% of freemen voted, he set about to crush the white-supremacist platform against civil rights. Consider three years after election, in 1871, it was Union military and political voices who set about forming the NRA under Grant’s administration to better protect the federal government against armed militias.

This is why today it would be so awesome if anyone making TV shows about the dysfunction of today’s NRA would point out that the decorated “roster of Union commanders” probably are rolling in their grave because of what their federal defense concept has become.

Burnside was the first NRA president and it’s worth noting his father emancipated their slaves in the 1820s, as most of the world was ending slavery.

Also note Burnside was engaged his bride-to-be disappeared and later showed up serving as a spy to perpetuate slavery, engaged to 16 slaveholder rebellion soldiers at the same time (saying “it is so they die happy and if they live I don’t give a damn”). While trying to fool Burnside a second time he arrested her.

Just to be clear, the pro-slavery sister and mother of the woman he was engaged to were both arrested for carrying large amounts of opium and morphine. With her family arrested in the United States for drug smuggling, she then pretends to be British and…

It is certain that a lot of people have completely forgotten that during this crazy time of privileged whites using every dirty trick possible to deny blacks any rights, Grant successfully drove civil rights in America. Grant used a multi-pronged military and civilian strategy to promulgate freedom in the truest sense.

What made 1871 such a pivotal time for NRA establishment?

After Grant had won on the battlefield, with far superior strategic plans than the bumbling failure General Lee, Grant was thrust into helping establish civilian models for Americans to defend themselves against residual terror cells (e.g. KKK) that were prolonging the Civil War.

Paramilitary terror campaigns continued to threaten to undermine emancipation or federal government legitimacy, and Union Generals knew America needed to build broader national defense options than just military ones.

In other words, when talking about 1871 as a start date, and saying “the situation shifted” for rifles in America, it was because a pro-government organization was founded as a citizen defense project to improve marksmanship of black men and…called it the NRA.

This NRA story about an 1871 equivalent of Black Panther might seem crazy and out of the blue until you also recognize that a man named Jefferson Beauregard in 2016 was appointed to head the Department of Justice (DoJ). What I mean is, when you look around more generally we’ve come a very long way from where we were in 1871.

The DoJ was created in 1870 by President Grant to fight against the KKK, also known as…wait for it…Jefferson and Beauregard’s legacy.

In case that reference is unclear, Jefferson and Beauregard were the lead traitors in their pro-slavery aggression against their own country. So now look at the news in 2016 that a man named Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was appointed to head the department created to defeat the men he was named after.

Even more to the point, in 1986 we hadn’t pivoted this far yet. There were newspaper headlines screaming about the man with a name intended to preserve painful memories of slavery and treason against his own country…calling him out as racist for saying the NAACP is “Un-American,” while calling Klansmen “Okay.”

Sessions is overtly the third generation with an absurdly un-American name. Can you see here the long game of the American white supremacist?

It sure seems very significant for the US to allow someone who calls a terrorist organization “Okay” to head the agency created to destroy that exact terrorist organization. This would be like Germany electing someone named Hitler Rommel Sessions III to be their Federal Minister of Justice.

In conclusion, I hope you see how the NRA of today has flipped 180 degrees from its origins of Union Generals aiming to help protect federal government by training black Americans to stop white supremacist militias from undoing civil rights and ruining the country.

It perhaps makes sense then that if the DoJ very openly becomes led by a third-generation family homage to pro-slavery anti-justice Jefferson and Beauregard…the NRA too now would be led by white supremacists who hate government (in fact the NRA flipped abruptly in a 1977 leadership coup called “Cincinnati Revolt” that arguably helped prop up South Africa’s apartheid government). However, neither event should define the entire meaning of these acronyms or obscure the true civil rights origins of both DoJ and NRA.