ARAB, Ala. The fight over Confederate symbolism has landed in an Alabama town where education leaders have banned the high school marching band from playing Dixie as the fight song.
Dozens of opponents of the decision packed a city school board meeting Thursday night in support of the tune, which they depict as a traditional part of the soundtrack of life in their small, Southern town rather than an ode to the days of slavery in the Old South.
Were from Alabama, were not from New York, said Daniel Haynes, 36, who attended Arab (AY-rab) High School and loves hearing the tune played after the Knights score a touchdown.
Board members didnt budge. The 750-student school has a new principal, band director, football coach and stadium this year, said Superintendent John Mullins, and the change was needed in a system where the core values include mutual respect and unity.
I really think its the right decision for the right reason at the right time, Mullins said in an interview.
Supporters of the song say theyll now take their complaints to the City Council, which appoints the five-member school board, but its unclear what might happen next. An old R&B song, The Horse, has temporarily replaced Dixie in the bands repertoire until a new fight song is selected.
Passions are running high among some in Arab, where many are still upset by school leaders decision a few years ago to comply with a Supreme Court decision and end student-led Christian prayers over the public address system before football games. Complaints about Dixie have renewed the debate over the role of religion in pregame ceremonies.
I like Dixie, but Im here for prayer, said Shane Alldredge, who attended the board meeting wearing a T-shirt that said Put Dixie and prayer back in the game.
Community college history teacher Russ Williams told the board he loves Dixie and other elements of Southern history, but the song isnt worth the controversy if it causes others pain.
The Dixie debate isnt brewing just in Arab, an overwhelmingly white town of about 8,200 people thats 70 miles (112 kilometers) north of Birmingham. Fans of the tune also are complaining in Glade Spring, Virginia, after leaders there prohibited the band from playing Dixie during games this fall at Patrick Henry High School.
Written by Ohio native Daniel D. Emmett, Dixies Land was first performed on stage in New York in 1859, two years before the Civil War, said historian and musician Bobby Horton, who performed some of the music for Ken Burns epic miniseries The Civil War.
It was written as what they called a walk-around tune for a minstrel show. It was like a tune between acts, said Horton.
Later known simply as Dixie, the song became an unofficial anthem of the rebel states after it was played at the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 1861. President Abraham Lincoln loved the tune and asked for it to be played at the White House the night Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered, said Horton.
University and high school bands across the South played Dixie for generations, but the practice waned as complaints rose about the song being a painful, racially insensitive reminder of the oppression of slavery.
The University of Mississippis Pride of the South marching band excluded the song from its playlist in 2016, and the Marching Rebels band of Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas, quit playing Dixie last year.
Southern historian Wayne Flynt, who remembers the song being sung in segregated schools in Alabama in the 1940s when he was a boy, said some view it as an anthem of regional pride. But Dixie and other Confederate emblems became symbols of white defiance as legalized segregation came under attack during the civil rights era, he said.
I would argue that Dixie is not necessarily an inherently racist song. It can certainly be a racist song. The way in which its been used tends to accelerate the understanding of it nationally as a racist song, Flynt said.
This summer in Arab, Mullins released a statement saying the song was being dropped because it has negative connotations that contradict our school districts core values of unity, integrity, and relationships.
The song hadnt previously been an issue in Arab, which Census statistics show is more than 96 percent white. But through the years, the band didnt play the song when visiting more diverse schools, officials said.
School board members have publicly supported Mullins decision to give up Dixie.
The board president, former Arab football coach Wayne Trimble, said his views were shaped by an incident from the late 1970s when an opposing head coach said he wasnt sure he could convince players on his team to make the trip to Arab because of Dixie.
That has stuck with me a long time, Trimble said in an interview. Is that the way we want Arab to be perceived?
Poster Comment:
An old R&B song, The Horse, has temporarily replaced Dixie in the bands repertoire until a new fight song is selected.
The only thing to remember is that to those that remove history(then forget) are doomed to repeat it! Who were the south slavemasters(Just like todays illegal aliens pushers)? Demoncrap! Why do blacks support Demoncrap? That's the 64K dollar questions!! Smart blacks do not support Demoncrap because they can think for themselves.
And there's nothing wrong with pride about the performance of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the CSA Navy in the war. The Army of Northern Virginia achieved stunning feats of military prowess - that war should have been over the first year, the Union should have rolled over Virginia, but the Army of Northern Virginia stopped them cold, threw them back, surprised them time and time and time again. Absolutely masterful campaigning - like the Grande Armee in 1814: impossible odds, but twisting and turning left and right and driving back one superior army after another. Eventually the weight of numbers told their tale and Richmond, like Paris, fell. But military men for all time will study what the Army of Northern Virginia did, and Americans have every right to be proud of that legacy. The greatest military commanders in American history showed what an army can do if it is well-led and well- motivated, even if haphazardly supplied.
And the CSA Navy! In its short existence it was easily the most innovative and revolutionary in history. First Navy to put ironclads to sea - and tear apart a line of enemy ships. First Navy to sink an enemy ship using a submarine and an underwater torpedo. A handful of brave commerce raiders tore a huge hole in the enemy's maritime economy.
From a warrior's viewpoint, Southern valor is indisputable, and it is entirely appropriate that we name warships after Southern victories in the Civil War. They were, after all, won by Americans.
One cannot praise slavery or defend the institution, or the Jim Crow and segregation that followed. Those were bad, and the South is better off rid of them. But Southern pride? It's warranted.
Untangling pride in valor on the battlefield and the vicious racism of the years is tough, because those symbols of valor were expropriated by later generations to be explicit symbols of segregationism, it is far too much to expect Blacks to be sympathetic.
In the end, the right thing happened - slavery ended, segtegation ended, and all of us, Southerners included, are better for that. But we can still honor the valor, and we cannot deny the beauty of the South, or its friendliness.
Carry me back to Old Virginny, and nothin' could be finer than to be in Carolina in the mornin', with Georgia on my mind headed towards Sweet Home Alabama. (And though all my exes don't live in Texas, quite a few of them do).
And the CSA Navy! In its short existence it was easily the most innovative and revolutionary in history. First Navy to put ironclads to sea - and tear apart a line of enemy ships. First Navy to sink an enemy ship using a submarine and an underwater torpedo.
Three crews perished during the short history of the CSS Hunley. One original crew member of the CSS Hunley was Absolum Williams.
Hunley Crewmen Found December 1999 Civil War Times Feature
9/23/1999 Civil War Times
Hunley Crewmen Found
BY SCHUYLER KROPF
Two of the Souths great lovescollege football and the Confederacycame together in July when archaeologists confirmed the discovery of four members of the submarine C.S.S. H.L. Hunleys first crew buried beneath the Citadels football stadium in Charleston, South Carolina. The skeletal remains were found among two dozen other graves in a long-lost Confederate cemetery paved over and forgotten when 21,000-seat Johnson Hagood Stadium was built in 1948.
[...]
The recovery of the Hunleys first crew is related to the continuing effort to raise and restore what is widely recognized as the worlds first successful attack sub. A team of divers funded by best-selling author Clive Cussler discovered the 40-foot, cigar-shaped vessel in 1995 about four miles off nearby Sullivans Island.
The sinking of the Hunley in August 1863 did not end the circle of tragedy that surrounded the sub. With Hunley, its inventor, in command, it sank a second time that October in the Cooper River. All hands were lost, including Hunley. After this second disaster, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard was reluctant to use the sub ever again. I can have nothing more to do with that submarine boat, he swore at the time. Its more dangerous to those who use it than the enemy.
On the night of February 17, 1864, however, the hand-cranked Hunley made history when it rammed a 90-pound black-powder charge fitted on a 20-foot spar into the hull of the blockader U.S.S. Housatonic. The Federal ship sank in three minutes with a loss of five men. The Hunley, with her commander, Lieutenant George Dixon, and his supporting crew of eight, were also lost when the sub sank during its return trip.
Absalom Williams Confederate Service, Death and Burial, CSS H.L. Hunley Service:
Service records for A.(Absalom)Williams indicate that he enlisted in the Confederate Army on May 16, 1862 in Newberry, SC where he was born. He was a private in the 25th SCV Company H which was stationed around Charleston, SC. According to his service records, he was transferred to a gunboat (believed to be the CSS Palmetto State) by orders of General G.T. Beauregard on October 23, 1862. On April 16th, 1863 he was transferred back from the gunboat to the 25th SCV Co. H. Absalom Williams was again transferred back to the gunboat (CSS Palmetto State)on April 25, 1863. On August 12th the CSS Hunley arrived in Charleston, SC. after being transported by rail from Mobile, Alabama. The CSS Hunley was initially manned by non-miltary personnel employed by the owner in quest of a $100,000 bounty offered for sinking the blockading ship the USS Ironsides. After 12 days, the local military forces became impatient with the lack of offensive activity by the CSS Hunley and seized the vessel. By August 26, 1863, the CSS Hunley was staffed by Confederate Navy volunteers from the CSS Palmetto State and CSS Chicora, including Absalom Williams. On August 29, 1863, after having dived and surfaced several times around the harbor, Lt John Payne who now commanded the CSS Hunley, ordered the crew to make for the docks at Ft Johnson in Charleston Harbor. As the submarine approached the dock, she submerged suddenly with the hatches open plunging 40 feet to the bottom. Lt Payne and three others escaped the sinking vessel. Absalom Williams and four other crew members drowned. Lt Charles Hasker, who was one of the survivors, later wrote that the sinking was due to Lt Payne inadvertently stepping on the lever that controlled the fins while climbing through the manhole resulting in the submarine diving as it approached the dock. Lt Payne had planned for the CSS Hunley to make an evening attack on the Union blockade that same fateful day. The Confederate compiled service records for A. (Absalom) Williams end after April 1863, corroborating his death on 8/29/1863. In the Confederate Service Record card catalogue at the SC state archives in Columbia, SC the following notation was made for A. Williams:"Transferred to torpedo boat and lost in attempt to blow up USS Ironsides". This is clearly a link to Absalom's service on the CSS Hunley. The CSS Hunley was raised from the bottom of the harbor and the bodies of Absalom Williams and his fellow crew members were recovered from the submarine. They were hastily buried together in the Mariner's Cemetery in Charleston. In 1999, the remains of Absalom Williams and his crew members were uncovered during construction at Johnson Hagood Stadium. The crew members were reinterred in May 2000 at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, SC with full military honors.
Absolum Williams By: Gail Williams Patterson Date: 9/28/2015, 2:40 pm
Absolum Williams was the Grandson of a slave on Daniel T. Williams plantation in Newberry, SC. We believe he was called Jim. His Grandfather and Daniel T. Williams daughter, Sarah, had a child together, Sheppard Williams. Absolum was 19 when he died on the first test run of the CSS Hunley submarine.