Attorney General Sessions, a Scalawag?

Although I try to avoid modern politics on this blog, the comments by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a proud Alabamian who has waxed fondly about the Ku Klux Klan, opposed civil rights legislation, and someone who has long since favored and promoted a white supremacist view of American history, is certainly worthy of being included here. Today, the Attorney General spoke as the keynote speaker before the Abraham Lincoln Foundation of the Union League of Philadelphia on the 16th president's 209th birthday and proceeded to finally dismiss the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War that he and so many Southerners have been raised to believe.    

"The thing was brewing from the beginning of the Republic," Sessions said. "Though many Southerners try to say otherwise--and I love my people--slavery was the cause of the war. It was not states' rights or tariffs or agrarian versus industrial economies. Those issues were all solvable and would have been solved. The cloud, the stain of human bondage--the buying and selling of human beings--was the unsolvable problem and was omnipresent from the beginning of the country. And the failure, the refusal of the South to come to grips with it, really to actually change this immoral system of enslavement led to the explosion," Sessions said. "As to slavery, it had to end. The nation could stand the disgrace no longer."

Although I know my neo-Confederate friends and I would like to see video proof of these comments, for now, I can only assume that either Sessions has at long last finally accepted real facts or else he's lost his bonkers and will be shortly on his way out of the administration once the SCV raises hell about this Scalawag!  

East Tenn. marble stone depicts Knoxvillian's "Last Lap" at Indy

We shall push this one a bit in terms of 19th century; however, the subject, A.J. "Pete" Kreis, was indeed born in 1900. Although I have lived in Knoxville nearly 14 years, I never knew until the other day that Knoxville has a connection, albeit a tragic one, with the Indianapolis 500. For a brief account of Kreis and his tragic racing accident at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as he prepared for the 1934 running of the Indy 500, please see the stories of my good friend, Mark Aubrey and Bill Dockery. I am, however, more fascinated with the beautiful 9-ton slab of East Tennessee marble quarried at the Appalachian Marble Quarry Company near the Forks of the River, a quarry owned by Pete's own father, John Kreis, and his family.

Kreis' 9-ton marble headstone shines on a sunny East TN afternoon. Courtesy of Find A Grave's website

Thompson Digital Collection

The Thompson photographic collection held at the McClung Historical Collection includes a photograph of the Kreis monument ordered in August 1935 and carved by Knoxville sculptor Albert Milani, who included the driver and the race starter, surrounded by the "Brickyard," a time when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was paved completely in bricks. Kreis's race car, carved also out of the slab of marble, is seen topping the wall in turn 1, where he and Bob Hahn, his ride-along mechanic, left the track at nearly 100 mph and was cut into two when it hit a tree. Kreis died instantly, his mechanic succumbed to his injuries moments after being removed from the wreckage.



So on this dreary day, after "base ball" practice in a driving downpour, one of my Holstons' teammates and I ventured over to Asbury Cemetery to see Kreis and his last lap at Indy. With some minor exceptions, notably the car itself, the marble stone has been maintained in excellent shape.

 

 

Sadly, a couple of the car's tires and its occupants show damage over the years

Tragically, both brothers died in car accidents 2 years a part.