News Release No. 1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Phone: 805-xxx-xxxx

E-Mail: southernspiritrising@gmail.com

Los Angeles, CA – At a meeting held in Beverly Hills, CA, New Orleans resident, Dr. Charles E. Lincoln, III announced the launch of a website, Southern Spirit Rising, (SouthernSpiritRising.com), which Dr. Lincoln said, will be a beacon of much needed healing for Southerners hungry to express their pride in their ancestors who stood up for the America's founding principles during the War to Uphold the Constitution in 1861.

Dr. Lincoln cited an incident at Christ Church Cathedral last September as the originating moment for the site and campaign.

“It struck me as I sat listening to the Very Reverend David duPlantier announce in the most sanctimonious tones imaginable that a reconciliation had been accomplished on the issue of slavery. I looked around at the glassy eyes staring straight ahead past the Very Reverend to the burial place of Leonidas Polk, behind the podium. I know it struck me as completely inappropriate. Other congregants, with Confederate ancestry, have left the church. Personally, I have never experienced a coming together on a common understanding on slavery, and slavery is something I have studied in depth. After my letter to the Church leadership on this and other issues was ignored I looked for other avenues for action.”

Dr. Lincoln, whose PhD from Harvard is in Anthropology and History, went on to outline some startling facts on the economics of the slave trade, which, he said, acquired captives through war at a time the population was expanding. The sale of slaves, mostly to Islamic countries but also to South America, North America, and the Caribbean, was only one of the two means used to dispose of excess people. The first, far more direct, was to slaughter them, using their bodies as food.

Lincoln, whose specialization in Anthropology was originally Mesoamerica, later became interested, he said, in the parallel practices in Africa and Central America in regards to cannibalism, slavery, human sacrifice, and torture. Africans sold into slavery in this way avoided being eaten by their captors, who were the upper classes of neighboring tribes. One such tribe was, Lincoln injected, the Luo Tribe, from which our President, Barack Obama, is descended through his father. Lincoln commented the facts on this point have yet to be researched but are included on their research agenda. “We will be looking into the backgrounds of numerous individuals, the President is only one of these.”

Talk show host and the publisher and editor of Free American, Clayton Douglas, who was involved in the Million Man Bike Ride by motorcyclists in Washington D. C. last summer was appointed to the board, as was Gail Lightfoot, who has been several times a candidate for U. S. Senate in California as a Libertarian. Additionally, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, a former presidential candidate came on-board.

“I want to see Southerners rediscover the passion of their history,” said Douglas.

The site is to be an organizing point for healing and for revealing facts which have previously remained outside of the public view which promote understanding on the issues. This will take place through online forums and seminars, planned for the coming months.

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