{"id":56476,"date":"2018-05-28T01:09:19","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T01:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56476"},"modified":"2018-05-28T01:09:19","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T01:09:19","slug":"we-are-the-original-southerners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56476","title":{"rendered":"We Are the Original Southerners"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Are the Original Southerners<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2018-05-22<\/p>\n

Malinda Maynor Lowery<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor; Director, Center for the Study of the American South (and Lumbee Indian<\/a>)
\nUniversity of North Carolina<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nAn Indian delegation visited the White House Conservatory in 1863 during the Civil War<\/a>. The story of American Indians during that period is largely overlooked in the contemporary struggle over statues of Confederate soldiers and politicians.
\nMathew Brady\/Buyenlarge, via Getty Images<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.<\/a> \u2014 The people clamoring over whether to keep or remove Confederate monuments<\/a> agree on one thing: This is a black-white issue. Last month, a graduate student doused the University of North Carolina\u2019s Confederate monument in a mixture of her own blood and red ink. The monument, she said, \u201cis the genocide of black people.\u201d<\/p>\n

I recognize my blood on these statues, too.<\/p>\n

When people see Southern history in black and white, where are American Indians? Most people believe that the American Indian genocide took place long ago. But it wasn\u2019t completely successful. There are over six and a half million American Indians, and many of them live in the South<\/a>. North Carolina<\/a> is home to the Lumbee Tribe<\/a>, the largest tribe of American Indians east of the Mississippi<\/a> (55,000 strong), of which I am a member. We are the original Southerners, and we shaped and continue to shape Southern history.<\/p>\n

And yet even the most progressive Americans don\u2019t seem to realize this. The coalition organized to oppose the Unite the Right rally<\/a> in Charlottesville, Va.<\/a>, last August did not invite<\/a> any representatives of Virginia\u2019s seven American Indian tribes<\/a> to participate…<\/p>\n

…Indian communities defied the logic of racial segregation; their very existence belied whites\u2019 insistence that there were two races, never to be mixed. In 1924, the Virginia<\/a> legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act<\/a>, which outlawed interracial marriage, in part by reclassifying American Indians as \u201ccolored.\u201d The act erased the distinct identity that people like Chief Branham<\/a> are still today trying to protect…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Carolina is home to the Lumbee Tribe, the largest tribe of American Indians east of the Mississippi (55,000 strong), of which I am a member. We are the original Southerners, and we shaped and continue to shape Southern history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,3015,23674,20],"tags":[15548,1616,2640,879,2327],"class_list":["post-56476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-lumbee-indians","tag-malinda-maynor-lowery","tag-new-york-times","tag-north-carolina","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56478,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56476\/revisions\/56478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}