This is the letter:
September
3, 2017
Edward
H. Sebesta
edwardsebesta@gmail.com
Mayor
Mike Rawlings
Mayor and
City Council City of Dallas
Dallas
City Hall
1500
Marilla St.
Dallas,
Texas 75201
Dear Hon.
Rawlings:
In your
online published memo I see that you have appointed as Confederate monuments
task force chair Rev. Frances Cudjoe Waters who in your memo list as a minister
of the United Methodist Church (UMC) and who has been a leader and strategist
in that denomination. A brief review of Rev. Waters activities show a
remarkably talented person and a person with a social conscious and active in the pursuit of social justice.
However,
since you brought up Rev. Waters’s leadership role in the UMC as a
qualification, I would like Rev. Water’s to speak to the UMC’s history of
lending their facilities to neo-Confederate groups, the Sons of Confederate
Veterans (SCV) and the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC.)
I have
been writing denominations and individual churches asking them to not lend
their facilities and the prestige of their denomination and historical
buildings to neo-Confederate groups. After writing St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
in 2014 in Richmond, Virginia they decided to disinvite the UDC. (http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2014/nov/07/confederates-hold-service-downtown-church/).
St.
Paul’s later decided to give up the Confederacy. This was the church which both
Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis attended during the Civil War. (http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/article_fda4f734-e732-5c7f-bbe3-5f66f1f09cb3.html)
However,
the UMC record on this is very poor. Despite extensive correspondence to
individual hosting churches, UMC bishops, and the national leadership the
record has been a refusal to engage the issue. UMC churches continue to lend
their facilities to the UDC. I enclose a package documenting the UDC activities
at UMC churches.
I enclose
some documentation about the SCV and the UDC. The SCV documentation was written
up a dossier published at Black
Commentator, (http://www.blackcommentator.com/526/526_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.htm), and I
enclose three articles from UDC Magazine. One UDC
magazine argues that the 14th Amendment was a mistake; another
is about “shrine to the Red Shirts,” a violent white terroristic group in 1876
in South Carolina, and yet another recommends the pro-Klan book, “Southern by
the Grace of God,” to be given to children as a “treasure.” I enclose a short
article on these materials published in the Dallas
Morning News, which provides more information about this book. (https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles)
Incidentally
these groups often come with sad, sad faces talking nostalgic memory. Everyone
might well consider these materials while they are talking to the city council
and to the task force.
I have no
idea if Rev. Waters knows of this UMC activity much less endorses it. I suspect that Rev. Waters probably is entirely
unaware of this activity and very likely would be very much dismayed to learn
of it.
However,
Rev. Waters is tasked to deal with the difficult issues of historical memory in
Dallas. I think it would be instructive to know Rev. Waters’s thoughts
regarding the UMC enabling of neo-Confederate groups.
Sincerely
Yours,
Edward
H. Sebesta
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