Sidney Lanier Elementary Expressive Arts Vanguard
This is somewhat repulsive. We name an arts school after a person who is the darling of neo-Confederates.
Sidney Lanier wrote a poem defending the Ku Klux klan during Reconstruction.
This is a poem in the multivolume set, "The Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier," edited by Charles R. Anderson, John Hopkins University Press, 1945. It is in Volumn 1, "Poems and Poem Outlines," Pages 191-193.
In this poem Lanier defends the Ku Klux Klan as the unavoidable consequence of President U.S. Grant's attempt to establish a multi-racial democracy in the South. Sidney Lanier did other writings against civil rights and Reconstruction, sometimes without his name, so he wouldn't be seen as an enemy of civil rights. The following is Lanier's poem, "Them Ku Klux" defending the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. (Italics is in the original. The puncituation is exactly as it was in the original.) Notice how Lanier thinks KKK terror is funny.
Them Ku Klux
Hit's nigh upon twenty year or more
(Which my old 'oman, Nancy,
She says hit's bar'ly nineteen, shore
But I knows women's fancy!)
That my habit's been, if it's warm and clear,
To set in my old split-bottom cheer
Out that on the fron pyazer, near
Them large plumgranite bushes.
I sets that tow'rds the cool o' the day,
To read my weekly paper,
And hears the hen a-cluckin' away
And the pigs agin' the scraper,
And I sees the sun go down the sky
And I hopes, bein' old, that I may die
As bold as the sun, surrounded by
Them bright and heavenly blushes.
I see thar, some few days ago,
A-readin' and a-noddin',
And "Well!" says he, "Did y'ever see
Sich doins, Gracious Goodness me!
As them Ku Klux is said to be
Eternally a-doin?
"Why here" (says he) " 's a paper, sent
To me from Penssylvany;
Jest look! Hit says --- The Ku Klux went
That night that was so rainy,
And they tuck up a poor old colored man,
And carved him, and jinted him; made him stan'
On his head and eat up himself; than ran
A-howlin' and hullybalooin'!"
Now Jeems Munro h'aint lived here long,
Fur he's a thrivin' Yankee,
That bought some land from me for a song
When things was crinky-cranky,
Jest after the war, and then piled in
And the way he workd, hit was a Sin!
And spite of his Yankeeness, he has bin
A fust-rate honest neighbor.
Yes sir, a fust-rate man is Jeems,
Whatever way you strike him,
And I wish these Georgy hills and streams
Had a milion more jest like him.
But Jeems has his faults, as most men ther'n,
And one of 'em is, that he kin not learn
That all o' them Ku Klux he's hearn
Is fools' and rascals' labor.
And so I says, "Now Jeems Munro,
Your air a man of gumption,
You know that two and two makes fo',
And ou aint much on presumption,
And now that you've lived in Bibb fo' year,
Did you ever see, or feel, or hear,
Or taste, or smell, or think you was near,
A Ku Kluxin' assassin?"
"Cant say I hev" says Jeems. "Well now,"
Say I, "Old Sumner's thundered,
And shuck the land, a-sayin' how
Your folks and Grant has blundered.
I've jest been a-readin' the old man's speech,
Whar he says that far on the sandy beach
Of Santo Domingo wuss Ku Kluxers screech,
Grate big ones, fur, fur surpassin'.
"The Suthern make: but that aint shucks;
He says that Grant's ther leader--
That Grant hisself's a old he-Ku Klux
-- A regular Ku Klux Breeder!
I'll read you," says, I, "but whur air my spex?"
To that nespwper: Nancy, wher air my spex?"
And I fumbled and grumbled horrid.
But presently I looked at Jeams:
His jaws wa fa'rly breakin'
And Nancy nigh had bust her seams
So hard her sides was shakin',
And they both sot thar and they laughed at me,
---"Twell wife put her arms full tenderly
Round my neck, and says, "There, old man, they be
Atop o' your own dear forrid!"
But Jeems laughed on, a good long while,
'Twell finally he splutted:
"Well, well, I sawn "I've hed a smile!"
And then again he stuttered:
But at last he says, "I've seed a sight
Which it makes me b'leeve that Sumner's right
And Grant's like you, so full o' spite
A-fumblin' and a-gruntin'
"To find out whar the Ku Klux was
(As you for your old spectikles)
And gittin' hisself in sich a buzz
And sich a muddle o'pickles
That he clean forgot (what Nancy see)
To feel hisself right keerfullee;
Then p'raps he'd 'a' found that hisself might be
Th' identickle thing he was huntin'!"
In this poem Lanier defends the Ku Klux Klan as the unavoidable consequence of President U.S. Grant's attempt to establish a multi-racial democracy in the South. Sidney Lanier did other writings against civil rights and Reconstruction, sometimes without his name, so he wouldn't be seen as an enemy of civil rights. The following is Lanier's poem, "Them Ku Klux" defending the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. (Italics is in the original. The puncituation is exactly as it was in the original.) Notice how Lanier thinks KKK terror is funny.
Them Ku Klux
Hit's nigh upon twenty year or more
(Which my old 'oman, Nancy,
She says hit's bar'ly nineteen, shore
But I knows women's fancy!)
That my habit's been, if it's warm and clear,
To set in my old split-bottom cheer
Out that on the fron pyazer, near
Them large plumgranite bushes.
I sets that tow'rds the cool o' the day,
To read my weekly paper,
And hears the hen a-cluckin' away
And the pigs agin' the scraper,
And I sees the sun go down the sky
And I hopes, bein' old, that I may die
As bold as the sun, surrounded by
Them bright and heavenly blushes.
I see thar, some few days ago,
A-readin' and a-noddin',
And "Well!" says he, "Did y'ever see
Sich doins, Gracious Goodness me!
As them Ku Klux is said to be
Eternally a-doin?
"Why here" (says he) " 's a paper, sent
To me from Penssylvany;
Jest look! Hit says --- The Ku Klux went
That night that was so rainy,
And they tuck up a poor old colored man,
And carved him, and jinted him; made him stan'
On his head and eat up himself; than ran
A-howlin' and hullybalooin'!"
Now Jeems Munro h'aint lived here long,
Fur he's a thrivin' Yankee,
That bought some land from me for a song
When things was crinky-cranky,
Jest after the war, and then piled in
And the way he workd, hit was a Sin!
And spite of his Yankeeness, he has bin
A fust-rate honest neighbor.
Yes sir, a fust-rate man is Jeems,
Whatever way you strike him,
And I wish these Georgy hills and streams
Had a milion more jest like him.
But Jeems has his faults, as most men ther'n,
And one of 'em is, that he kin not learn
That all o' them Ku Klux he's hearn
Is fools' and rascals' labor.
And so I says, "Now Jeems Munro,
Your air a man of gumption,
You know that two and two makes fo',
And ou aint much on presumption,
And now that you've lived in Bibb fo' year,
Did you ever see, or feel, or hear,
Or taste, or smell, or think you was near,
A Ku Kluxin' assassin?"
"Cant say I hev" says Jeems. "Well now,"
Say I, "Old Sumner's thundered,
And shuck the land, a-sayin' how
Your folks and Grant has blundered.
I've jest been a-readin' the old man's speech,
Whar he says that far on the sandy beach
Of Santo Domingo wuss Ku Kluxers screech,
Grate big ones, fur, fur surpassin'.
"The Suthern make: but that aint shucks;
He says that Grant's ther leader--
That Grant hisself's a old he-Ku Klux
-- A regular Ku Klux Breeder!
I'll read you," says, I, "but whur air my spex?"
To that nespwper: Nancy, wher air my spex?"
And I fumbled and grumbled horrid.
But presently I looked at Jeams:
His jaws wa fa'rly breakin'
And Nancy nigh had bust her seams
So hard her sides was shakin',
And they both sot thar and they laughed at me,
---"Twell wife put her arms full tenderly
Round my neck, and says, "There, old man, they be
Atop o' your own dear forrid!"
But Jeems laughed on, a good long while,
'Twell finally he splutted:
"Well, well, I sawn "I've hed a smile!"
And then again he stuttered:
But at last he says, "I've seed a sight
Which it makes me b'leeve that Sumner's right
And Grant's like you, so full o' spite
A-fumblin' and a-gruntin'
"To find out whar the Ku Klux was
(As you for your old spectikles)
And gittin' hisself in sich a buzz
And sich a muddle o'pickles
That he clean forgot (what Nancy see)
To feel hisself right keerfullee;
Then p'raps he'd 'a' found that hisself might be
Th' identickle thing he was huntin'!"