Army vet irate after board member calls Confederates ‘savages’
The fight started when Chris Kimble of Destrehan emailed the St. Charles Parish School Board on whether the school system would observe Confederate History Month in April.
“Not at all!” replied Ellis Alexander from his school system email address.
When Kimble asked why, Ellis responded, “They were savages!”
An enraged Kimble demanded Alexander apologize and resign from the School Board, and brought his complaint to Board President Dennis Naquin.
As of Friday, Alexander declined to comment about his response.
Naquin said Alexander answers to his constituents, but he should not have spoken in the manner he did as a School Board member or replied from the school system website.
“Those are his comments and he understands that they are his comments,” Naquin said. “This is an Ellis Alexander issue – not a School Board issue.”
On questions raised to the School Board, Naquin clarified protocol is to refer them to the superintendent and that’s what should have happened up front in this situation. Gomez-Walker has since responded that Confederate History Month is not a national holiday so it’s not observed and it hasn’t been observed in the past either.
But Kimble interpreted Alexander’s remarks as showing “hate and disdain for American veterans,” especially in use of the word “savages.” He called it a “racial slur” against Native Americans who served in the Confederate military.
He aired these comments in his social media group and they responded, too.
“I was raised through the school system,” Kimble said. “I graduated from Destrehan High School in 2004. So I am well aware of what they are teaching our children. After four years of independent study and research, I have come to learn that most everything we are taught in school is not only a lie, but the lies are reversed.”
When Kimble made his request to the School Board, he noted several school systems in the South are observing Confederate History Month, including Louisiana. But this also comes at a time when many states are discontinuing the observance.
“If our nation openly celebrates Black History Month, Woman History Month, Hispanic History Month, Pacific Islander History Month – then not even mention Confederate History Month, I am left with a sense of discrimination,” he said. “On Feb. 26, 1929, the 27th Congress passed a law – Public Law 810 – which in short states that Confederate soldiers and sailors are ‘equivalent’ to Union veterans.”
Kimble’s efforts to focus attention on Confederate History Month come less than a month after a Hahnville activist urged the St. Charles Parish Council not to bring New Orleans’ four rejected Civil War monuments to a proposed veterans memorial park in Luling.
Kamau Odinga, a community organizer and activist for 44 years, told the council he was responding to Councilman Paul Hogan’s internal emails with council members asking how they felt about bringing these monuments to the parish.
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