Unfortunately, this is not a scary Halloween story, but a story about how one community has been impacted by fake news and lack of education.
Recently, you may have seen that the Texas Reconstruction Project is taking a seven city tour in North Texas. The Texas Reconstruction Project is seeking to educate Texans about the Lost Cause, the Confederacy, and the Neo-Confederate groups fighting to keep the Confederacy relevant. Kaufman, just southeast of Dallas, is one of the cities scheduled on that tour.
What kind of education? Here is a video from Weatherford in August. They set up a table, they have pamphlets, and speakers give presentations about history.
After reading about Kaufman’s reaction to education coming to their town, it shows how much Kaufman needs to be educated.
A bad joke taken out of context.
After word got out that there would be a demonstration with education in Kaufman, some Kaufman Confederates began spreading rumors online.
We’ve wrote about this type of psychological warfare before.
Local Confederates, Trumpers, racists, and militia people hear that there is to be a demonstration against something they hold near and dear to their heart, like racist statues, and they start explode with online rumors.
“Antifa is coming to burn down our town! Busloads of Antifa are coming! They are going to deface our statue! They are going to tear down our statue! Ahhhhhh”
Local Dummies
After Jimmy Council of Kaufman started the online rumor that the leader of Antifa is coming to Kaufman to talk about tearing the statue down. The man who he was referring to, Bryan Register, made a joke about it.
Little did Register know, that the Kaufman Confederates would take him seriously.
Bryan Register is a professor in Austin, he is a scheduled speaker at the Kaufman event, and he has a sense of humor that some on the slower side might not get.
Is it really necessary to rehash for the billion and fifth time that there is no such group as Antifa? Apparently, for many in Kaufman it is. Not only is there no such thing as Antifa, the people in America who subscribe to anti-fascist ideology are not associated with any groups, and there certainly is no such thing as an Antifa leader.
Register, is the type of guy that wears loafers and an pocket protector. If the people of Kaufman knew that, they would definitely not be scared.
Unfortunately, in the Kaufman County Breaking News Facebook Group, many of them were pooping in their pants.
Register put out a statement explaining the joke and himself.
It still didn’t dawn on the Kaufman Confederates. Here are some of the responses to Register’s statement.
Does it hurt your brain? It hurts mine.
When doing my research on the Confederate statue, I came across a Facebook page called Kaufman Confederate. There is a real effort in Kaufman to keep racism and hatred alive under the guise of the Lost Cause.
Kaufman Confederate even has been sharing Living Blue in Texas’ content on on their page.
I laughed so hard, I spit my drink out.
While the absolute idiocy of this post from Kaufman Confederate is laughable, it’s important to not HOW they are spreading disinformation.
They posted a screenshot of our article, but failed to post the actual article itself.
You can find this article about Mirabeau Lamar here.
If Kaufman Confederate actually read the article, they may have learned that Mirabeau was an a white supremacist who committed genocide.
They would have been doing a favor to their followers, if they would have provided a link. However, just like the Confederates who came before them, they chose to spread disinformation. By posting only a screenshot, Kaufman Confederate literally changed the narrative.
Let’s address the misinformation this person posted.
No one affiliated with Living Blue in Texas belongs to any Antifa group. Not on Facebook and not in the real world. Would we love to join a book club with like-minded people who think fascism is bad, sure. But unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find any groups or book clubs that have a stated purpose of hating fascism. If we did, we would surely be on their email list.
Mirabeau Lamar died before the Civil War, so he was never technically part of the Confederacy. The Texas Reconstruction Project is focused on ridding Texas of odes to white supremacy. In Texas, those odes most often are related to the Confederacy. Lamar was a white supremacist who committed genocide before the Civil War even happened.
Most importantly, it is true that Living Blue in Texas is a Democratic blog. If the “Living Blue” part didn’t give it away. As a Democratic blog, we believe in equality for all and human rights are important to us. Equality and human rights should not be a political issue.
Unfortunately, when only one side of the political spectrum stands for equality and human rights and the other side stands against it, it then becomes political.
Kaufman has forgotten their history.
Forgotten or erased, it’s hard to tell.
The most ironic thing about Kaufman Confederate’s upset over the Lamar article, is the disgusting connection between Mirabeau Lamar and David S. Kaufman, Kaufman’s namesake.
The Ashworth Act was signed by three people. Lamar and Kaufman just happened to be two of those people. What was the Ashworth Act? Read it for yourself.
In simple terms that even the Kaufman Confederate would understand. In 1840 Kaufman and Lamar signed a bill that made it illegal to be a free person of color in Texas. If a Black person, who was not a slave, was caught in Texas, they would be jailed and then sold into slavery.
That is the man that Kaufman the town and Kaufman the county is named after. Puts a whole new perspective on the name of “Kaufman Confederate,” doesn’t it?
Speaking of Confederate. What was Kaufman like after the Civil War?
Like every other county south of the Mason Dixon, Kaufman County lynched, killed, brutalized, and terrorized the Black community for decades. While simultaneously doing this, they uplifted white supremacists, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Ku Klux Klan.
1883 – Two unknown Black men were lynched. Also in 1883 was the lynching of Martin Bradley.
1884 – A mob of white men in Kaufman County used “Ku Klux Klan law,” tied a disabled Black man up in a stable and beat him nearly to death with a buggy whip.
1885 – An innocent Black man was shot multiple times for fitting the description of a wanted fugitive.
1887 – Crawford Benson, a Black man, was shot and lynched.
1888 – Sam Smith, a Black man, was lynched. Also that year, a Mexican man was killed by a white man.
1889 – Kaufman held a Confederate reunion.
1891 – Confederate veteran had another reunion and barbeque in Kaufman County.
1892 – Confederate veterans held a rally in Kaufman.
1893 – The County Sheriff was quoted in the paper referring to Black teenagers as the n-word, (hard R), which was still considered a slur back then.
1895 – The United Confederate Veterans gathered in Kaufman County.
1897 – In Kaufman County and other counties around North Texas, the Texas Whitecaps were pulling Black men out of their homes and whipping them, telling them to leave Texas. Many of them did flee. That same year, a lynch mob of over 200 people was formed to lynch an unknown Black man accused of a crime, it was reported he may have been lynched, but it was unconfirmed.
1898 – Whitecaps, were still going into Black neighborhoods and running Black people out of town.
1899 – A Black man was arrested and a lynch mob was formed. The Sheriff had to take the prisoner to Dallas to save the man from the lynch mob. During the same year, the Kaufman County Whitecaps were putting notices on Black family’s homes, telling them to get out of town.
1900 – There were only four still living Confederate soldiers of the original 112 Confederate soldiers who came from Kaufman County.
1903 – The lynching of Henry Johnson happened in Kaufman County. Also that year, a white man shot and killed a Black man.
1904 – A Mexican man was found murdered, his skull was crushed and his body was thrown in a well.
1909 – Kaufman County began raising money for the Confederate memorial. Another newspaper reported at the time the monument was specifically for the Lost Cause.
1911 – The Confederate monument in Kaufman was erected.
1922 – The Methodist church in Kaufman endorsed the Ku Klux Klan.
1923 – The Ku Klux Klan in Kaufman participated in a parade.
What’s the point?
The point is after the Civil War ended, in Kaufman County, just as in every other place in Texas, white people launched a campaign of terror towards the Black community. It isn’t a coincidence that they were simultaneously celebrating the Confederacy or that they erected the Confederate monument during the height of Jim Crow.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s Kaufman County was thriving with white supremacy. Their Confederate statue is based on white supremacy. That shouldn’t be ok with anyone. However, in 2020 it appears as if there are some Kaufman County residents that want to keep their white supremacist legacy, by ensuring the statue remains.
America can no longer be a nation of racism. Millions of Americas all over this nation are fighting to make this country more inclusive. Kaufman County is no exception.
The statue should be removed off of public land, the legal way, and everyone who stands against racism should be standing against that statue.