J.E.B. who? It’s now going to be Obama Elementary in Richmond

It’s not new, or particularly newsworthy, that yet another school somewhere in the country has chosen to name itself after the nation’s 44^th president. Heck, there are some 44 schools that already bear the moniker of Barack Obama.

OBAMA: Now has a Richmond school in memory

Yet most of those were new school buildings erected in recent years, and often in places where the locals never would have put the name symbolizing the Confederacy of old on a public structure.

WHICH IS WHAT makes the newly-named Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, Va. – named for our very own community organizer-turned-U.S. president, all the more unique.

For until now, the school had bore the name of J.E.B. Stuart – who didn’t even live to see the end of the Civil War, but during the conflict between the states was regarded by southern interests as a skilled horseman and cavalry officer and one of the supreme military officials of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Of course, to everybody else, J.E.B. was just some ol’ white guy who once had the nerve to take up arms against the United States. An act of treason, if you want to be literal about it.

All because he wanted to reinforce the “way of life” that the South always proclaimed – the one that kept non-white people in a status of second-class citizenship. As in the South wanted them counted in the population to boost their total but wasn’t about to give them the same rights of white people.

BUT THERE WERE those who subscribed to the theory of “the lost cause” when thinking of the Civil War who were determined to pay tribute to every possible Confederate figure to try to glorify why they fought against the United States.

So the idea that J.E.B. Stuart could get a school named for him? Have generations of children thinking of him as a figure worthy of respect? I’m sure some would argue it no more ridiculous that I went to elementary schools in the Chicago area named for generals George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But times truly are changing. No matter how much some want to think this Age of Trump offers credibility to their cause, it seems the day will come when we can dump the Confederacy glorification.

STUART: Now just a figure of the past

We now pay tribute at this Richmond school to the first non-white man to become U.S. president – a concept that I’m sure infuriates the Confederacy-backers and probably has them backing Donald Trump’s actions in large part because they seem determined to erase the memory of Obama’s presidential actions.

BUT MAYBE IT’S just the evidence that the Obama legacy just can’t be erased – and that the Trump presidential legacy ultimately is determined to be his failure to undo the actions of recent decades. No matter how much he tries.

Personally, I find the idea that a Richmond high school is making such a gesture. For that Virginia city once served as the capital during those four years the Confederate states tried declaring themselves to be an independent nation.

Now, of course, Richmond is nothing more than a state capital for Virginia – no more important on the national political scene than Springfield, Ill. Our very own state capital city that gave us the figure of Abraham Lincoln.

Who lives on bigger than any of those grey-clad Confederates who touted the concept of ‘states rights’ not so much because they wanted separate nation-states but because they didn’t want anybody else interfering with their ability to back certain acts of immorality with the rule of law.

TO THE PEOPLE who still, to this day, try to justify the Confederacy, I’m sure the idea of an Obama School in Richmond is the equivalent of phlegm being hocked into their collective face.

Do we need more Lincoln Schools in South

But to the vast majority of us, it’s a sign that we’re finally, long-overdue, ready to move on from the mess that bogged down our nation some 150-plus years ago, and which some continued to tried to fight for during the following century-and-a-half.

Besides, just think of the mental chaos to be created for future generations who try to justify Confederate rhetoric while explaining the existence of Obama School.

While the memory of James Ewell Brown Stuart fades further into the past. Seriously, with all those names, it’s no wonder people just called him “Jeb.”

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A fitting result for would-be Confederate memorial on South Side

The national stink over removing all those statues erected across the South to pay tribute to the leaders of the one-time Confederate States is taking on a unique Chicago angle.

They rest in a changed neighborhood and under a U.S. flag. How appropriate for old Confederates

I’m talking about the statue that exists at the Oak Woods Cemetery in the Grand Crossing neighborhood. It marks the spot known as Confederate Mound, which actually is a mass grave for thousands of prisoners of war during the Civil War who were shipped to Chicago, held here and wound up dying here without ever seeing their native South again.

MANY OF US probably don’t realize that the one-time Camp Douglas in Chicago wound up being a prison camp for those southern sympathizers whom U.S. interests wanted held in as remote a place from the actual fighting of the Civil War as possible.

That, and the fact there were business interests based in Chicago that sold the goods to the U.S. military that kept the war going, are the local connections to that long-ago conflict over secession that some of us seem determined to want to revive.

Because those men died here, their remains wound up being buried here. They were denied what they most likely would have desired – a return trip home.

It’s not like we have individual graves paying tribute to those men who were willing to fight for the concept of splitting the United States in two – even though many of them probably had no personal interest in such a concept.

WHICH IS WHY I personally don’t get too worked up over this memorial. It’s a grave marker – as opposed to the statues paying tribute to Lee, Davis, Longstreet or any of the others who had leadership roles in the attempt at creating a new nation based on the concept of white supremacy.

Which is why certain people of today are more than eager to refight its battles – they likely do carry a distorted view of what the Confederacy was and think it somehow legitimizes their own racial nonsense.

Another Oak Woods resident who in life shot down the racial ideals the Confederates held

Which also is why Trump is providing aid and comfort to that twisted element of our society when he talks about "the beautiful statues" that are being removed.

But let’s be honest – the Confederate attempt at creating a constitution bore some similarities to what the United States had at the time. But it included provisions ensuring the continued existence of slavery based on race.

THERE WERE THOSE men who gave their lives maybe because they thought they were fighting to protect their homes. But also because their leaders were protecting their rights to keep other humans enslaved for physical labor.

It may have been an economic issue. But not really.

So for those men who died in prison camp conditions, many due to small pox and cholera, their time in life was miserable enough. But I wonder if their “eternal rest” is something that would disgust them even more.

Because the Grand Crossing neighborhood, like much of the rest of Chicago’s South Side, has undergone a significant change in composition. It’s majority African-American, and most people living there now don’t have a clue that white people ever used to call their homes home. Which creates the oddity of a Confederate grave in a black neighborhood.

AND IN A cemetery that contains, amongst others, the remains of one-time Mayor Washington, Olympic athlete Jesse Owens and Ida B. Wells, who during life campaigned against the practice of lynching.

A front page worth framing?!?

In fact, Oak Woods has become known as a cemetery where many African-American people wish to be buried. If there is an after-life, I’m wondering if those wretched old souls are complaining about the “neighbors” their earthly remains now have.

So as far as whether the grave market depicting a southern infantry soldier with crossed arms ought to be removed, I question whether it’s worth the hassle. Having that marker where it is serves as a reminder of just how out-of-place the whole Confederate cause truly is in our society.

Considering how repulsive that cause and what it truly stood for was, maybe it’s all the more appropriate.

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