MSNBC"s Hardball Host Minimizes The Evil Of The Confederacy By Stating That Nazi Reenactments Are Evil But Confederate Reenactments Are OK!

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI was deeply offended by insensitive and historically fallacious remarks made by Chris Matthews during his October 11, 2010 Hardball show. Mr. Matthews, while rightfully challenging Eric Cantor's Nazi reenactment as offensive but in contrast he defended confederate reenactments as just part of a love for tradition and history. I would hope that Mr. Matthews at least knew African American history on a cursory level. The history of slavery, segregation, discrimination, embodied in the confederate tradition, cost at a minimum between 4 and 15 million lives just in the middle passage between Africa and America. Once on American shores Africans were subjected to the most barbaric chattel slave system in world history. Slavery lasted for over 250 years. Legal segregation and de-facto segregation and discrimination only began to be dismantled around forty years ago. Chris Matthews dismissal of the horrific barbarism of the confederacy is shameful. Confederates and their ancestors and accomplices murdered at a minimum in the neighborhood of 20 million people, over a period of over 300 years. Confederates are America's Nazis.
I have been a fan of Hardball for years. I usually agree with Mr. Matthews's positions but I have found that he occasionally is insensitive to women and African Americans. Chris Matthews needs to understand that for African Americans there is no difference between July 3, 1776 and July 5, 1776. Our ancestors were still held in brutal slavery by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al after July 4, 1776. America did not become a true democracy until after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.
Please do not dismiss the evil of the confederacy and its accomplices. The slave trade and its legacy of slavery, segregation and discrimination is America's original sin. To African Americans the confederate flag represents the same level of evil as does the Nazi flag. This flag and the confederate tradition represents murder, rape and slavery. This is the history of our country. Americans have fought and died from this countries colonial days to the present to make America the democracy it is today. We still have more room to improve.
Please do not belittle the legacy of these patriots struggle to make America live up to those most famous lines in the Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". This dream was only won by African Americans after years and generations of struggle
John H. Armwood
Chris Matthews's comments are in this video clip.

History of Islam in America - Islam in America During the Slavery Years

History of Islam in America - Islam in America During the Slavery Years

Muslims have been part of American history since pre-Columbus times. Indeed, early explorers used maps that were derived from the work of Muslims, with their advanced geographical and navigational information of the time.

Some scholars estimate that 10-20 percent of the slaves brought over from Africa were Muslims. The film "Amistad" alluded to this fact, portraying Muslims aboard this slave vessel trying to perform their prayers, while chained together on deck as they crossed the Atlantic. Personal narratives and histories are harder to find, but some stories have been passed on from reliable sources:

Omar Ibn Said (ca. 1770-1864) was born in the Muslim state of Futa Toro in Western Africa, in present-day Senegal. He was a Muslim scholar and trader who was captured and enslaved. He arrived in South Carolina in 1807, and was sold to James Owen of North Carolina.

Sali-Bul Ali was a slave on a plantation. His owner James Cooper wrote: "He is a strict Mahometan (sic); abstains from spirituous liquors, and keeps various fasts, particularly that of the Ramadan..."

Lamen Kebe was a slave who used to be a school teacher in Africa. He shared information about the texts and teaching methods used in the Islamic schools of his country.

Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Sori spent 40 years in slavery before he returned to Africa to die. He wrote two autobiographies, and signed a charcoal sketch of himself by Henry Inman, which was featured on the cover of "Freedman's Journal" and is on display in the Library of Congress.

Many of the Muslim slaves were encouraged or forced to convert to Christianity. Many of the first-generation slaves retained much of their Muslim identity, but under the harsh slavery conditions this identity was largely lost to later generations.

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