Don't want to Bragg, but ...

The latest battleground in the effort to obliterate all reminders of slavery and slave owners apparently will be the names of U.S. Army bases, many of which are named after Confederate generals.

That is a distinction at which I have often marveled. Why name Army bases after people who fought against the U.S. Army? The answer apparently is that when new Army bases were established in the 20th century, Confederate heroes were still popular among local officials in the South, and the Army gave local officials naming rights for the new bases that engulfed millions of acres of land.

One Army base's name has a bit of irony. Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., is named after Braxton Bragg, who is widely regarded as probably the worst general in the Confederacy. He might be one of the worst generals in history! Activists who want to purge Bragg's name from the huge Army base might want to think twice. Yes, Bragg was loyal to the Confederacy, and he was a slave owner (as nearly all wealthy individuals in the Old South were), but his bumbling and ignorance of strategy and tactics probably shortened the Civil War by several months and saved many thousands of lives, North and South. His incompetence was especially noted at Chattanooga and Franklin, Tennessee.

If Southern defenders of the Confederacy took a moment to learn more about Bragg, they might be less interested in defending the Bragg name. Yankees wanting to erase Confederate names from American soil might want to reconsider and make Bragg an honorary Union general. After all, he probably did far more from the Union cause that he did for the Confederate cause.

Article lays out argument for slave reparations

The notion of reparations for African-Americans in compensation for the sins of slavery is an argument I never found persuasive. So far as I have been able to trace my family history, none of my ancestors owned slaves. My ancestors were poor farmers whose lives were probably little better than the lives of slaves on some plantations. My great-great-grandfather, who was killed 150 years ago at the Third Battle of Winchester, did not own slaves, nor even land. He was a tenant farmer with an illiterate wife. Should his descendants be taxed for reparations at the same rate as the descendants of plantation squires who owned scores of slaves?

And who would receive reparations? Some African-Americans are recent immigrants or the children of recent immigrants (e.g., President Obama) with no ancestry of the deprivations of slavery. Should they get paid, too? And what of African-Americans of mixed races? Some people estimate that large percentages of today's African-Americans have mixed ancestry, either from consensual relations or from rape. Where would these Americans fit in the reparations formula? The 1860 census reveals that some free African-Americans of that year were themselves slave owners. Would their descendants pay reparations or receive reparations?

With this background of skepticism, I read the June cover story in The Atlantic magazine: "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I came away from the almost book-length article with a new respect for the reparations argument. Coates argues that reparations are justified not only by the injustice of slavery but also by post-Civil War oppression, physical, statutory and financial. The stories he tells of unethical real estate developers legally stealing homes from black buyers are appalling, especially considering these practices lasted into the late 1960s. The argument for compensation for these wrongs committed against still-living victims strikes me as far more persuasive than reparations for slavery.

Coates' arguments still fall short on the practical side. He avoids any discussion of the logistics of reparations, but those logistics will have to be addressed. This article by David Frum addresses the practical barriers to any reparations legislation. I recommend reading Coates' argument (and it is more of an argument than a disinterested, objective analysis), followed by Frum's practical reasons why Coates' dream is unachievable. In its current issue, The Atlantic has published a number of well-considered responses to Coates' argument. The magazine should be applauded for leading this national debate.

Recalling John Hope Franklin at Barton

The death Tuesday of historian John Hope Franklin was certainly an obituary worthy of the front page. Franklin was an extraordinary historian who blazed the trail for historians of African-American history and essentially created black history with his own hands and mind. His 1947 book, "From Slavery to Freedom," remains the gold standard in black history. He is rightly credited for making black history American history.

Franklin spoke at Barton College a few years ago. (Unfortunately, a search of the Wilson Times Web site did not turn up the article from his appearance at Barton, so I can't report the date when he spoke, but I think it was about five years ago.) In person, he was as I had expected him to be, the epitome of the gracious, dignified gentleman — lean, upright, knowledgeable, courtly and quiet-spoken. He could smile disarmingly or stare with piercing eyes, and he sprinkled his brief lecture to the Friends of Hackney Library with subtle and often poignant humor.

During his question-and-answer, I asked Franklin what he thought of the Depression-era slave narratives — the interviews conducted by writers working for the Works Progress Administration with aging former slaves. I had read a few books collecting these narratives and found them moving and astounding for their lack anger and bitterness. ("My Folks Don't Want Me to Talk About Slavery" is one collection of narratives from North Carolina residents who had endured slavery.) Several former slaves described the affection they felt for their former masters and mistresses and said that affection was fully returned. They described attending funerals of their former owners and of former owners attending former slaves' funerals.

Franklin said he didn't put much credence in these slave narratives, pointing out that the interviews were done with people who were quite old and were asked to recall events from 70 years before. The interviews were also conducted by white writers, he said, and Jim Crow-era blacks would likely have wanted to ingratiate themselves to their white interviewers with rosier memories of what slavery was like.

I certainly have to defer to Dr. Franklin's knowledge of African-American history and his judgment of the validity of these slave narratives, but I still find these memories from the 1930s touching and compelling stories.