Southern Partisan: Tell us a little about your Confederate ancestor. What was his name?

Nelson Winbush: Louis Napoleon Nelson.

SP: With a name like Napoleon he should have been a fighter, I guess. What was his role in the war effort?

NW: Well he went to war along with his master and son, E.R. and Sidney Oldham of Lauderdale County, Tennessee. They were Company M, 7th Cav., Tennessee.

SP: And so he basically served as a body servant to these...?

NW: Yes. Initially he went as E.R. Oldham's, cook and bodyguard. As things progressed, he assumed other roles, too. E.R. was the son of his master, Mr. James Oldham.

SP: Was he ever an actual rifle-toting soldier in the War?

NW: He was in combat at Lookout Mountain, Bryson's Crossroads and Vicksburg.

SP: What year did he die?

NW: 1934.

SP: As a modern day Confederate, you, yourself are sort of a minority within a minority. Do you ever find that to be a difficult position?

NW: No. No problem at all. Where I was born and raised in Lauderdale County Tennessee, everybody, black and white, knew about my grandfather. I used to ride in a buggy with him. I was five when he passed on. I remember things that he told me that occurred, prior to, during and after the War.

SP: How old was he when the War started?

NW: He went to war at age 14, which was common. He was born in 1847.

SP: He must have had a lot of stories?

NW: Yes. He went to 39 United Confederate Veterans Reunions. When he got ready to go to reunions, he just took his hat, walked around the courthouse square. When he got all the way around, he had more than enough money to go to and come back from wherever the reunion was. He and two other gentlemen, W.B. Drake, Mr. J. Buchanan, both of whom were white, would always traveled together. They would board the train in Ripley, Tennessee and pay a grand total of fifteen cents one way.

SP: So you grew up there in Tennessee?

NW: Yes. I lived in his house until I moved to Florida in 1955.

SP: What brought you to Florida?

NW: I came to teach one year to see what Florida was like and the sand got between my toes and I haven't gotten away yet. And, as I reflect on things he told me about Florida, coming to reunions in Tampa and Jacksonville, in a sense I feel like I was in Florida long before I ever got here. After I got here, I began to recognize things that he described to me as a kid at five and under.

SP: Obviously, you have a lot of personal stories. What's been the source of most of your information about your grandfather?

NW: Stories he told members of the family and all. Just like I said, I used to ride in the buggy with him. Sit on the porch and talk to him. And then, my mother, my grandmother and I, we always talked about him even after he had passed. My grandmother died in '53 and my mother lived until '83. In the living room downstairs, we had oodles of pictures, reunion pictures, clippings, newspaper articles, some of which I have in my possession. I happen to have a reunion cap and jacket that was his. I have the Confederate battle flag that draped his coffin when he passed. So...

SP: So at his funeral, he had a Confederate flag on the coffin?

NW: Yes. He was buried in a gray casket, in a Confederate uniform, with a Confederate battle flag. And, I have that flag in my possession. With things like that, there is no argument. People can't argue with what my grandfather told me about himself.

SP: What did he do after the war?

NW: He came back to Lauderdale County and stayed with his master, Mr. Oldham, for twelve years after the War. So that wasn't a problem with him. My grandfather became a plaster by trade and he plastered houses all over west Tennessee, parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky. Even though he couldn't read or write, he could walk into a house under construction and say, I need so many bundles of lathe, so many yards of sand, so many slack lime, quick lime, so may kegs of nails. There was very little left when he plastered the whole house. He was good at it.

SP: Do any of your other family members share your view of the Confederacy?

NW: Well, you see my grandfather was married four times. When one wife died, he married the next one. My grandmother having been his fourth wife. They are aware of it and when I do something or make a video or something appears in the paper, I see that they all get copies of it. Yeah. They are all proud of it.

SP: What do you do for a living?

NW: I taught high-school, coached athletics, and was assistant principal for the last eight years before I retired in 1982. After that time, I got involved in real estate, selling securities, then a group of us got together and chartered a national bank. We sold it in 1995, so I was free again. I just travel and talk and speak and I'm proud of going to various places that my grandfather went and told me about.

SP: In your view, what was the South fighting for?

NW: Well, secession was perfectly legal the way the Constitution was written. Lincoln decided he wanted to declare war on the South. So, when the South was invaded the Southerners saw fit to defend their homes. The Yankee historians want to make people believe that the war was about slavery. The war wasn't about slavery. The war was about states' rights and tariffs: they call 'em taxes now. The system was skewed toward the North. See, I grew up less than eighteen miles from the Mississippi River. We used to go down and watch the barges go up and down the river and I never saw a barge break away going upstream. Every barge I ever saw break away was going downstream. But it cost more money to send cotton and other goods and produce up the river than the refined goods and textiles back down the same river. And the money always stayed up North.

SP: Do you have to defend yourself to friends and just the general public?

NW: No. No, I don't have that problem. People at home in Ripley knew all about my grandfather. The local blacks know all about my grandfather through me and through the media. They'll see me and say, I saw you in the paper and I cut the article out, because the majority of the blacks here, that have been here any time, I had them as students anyway. So they know me real well. I don't have a problem. Same thing with the Whites. The Yankees that come down, they just have to fall in line.

SP: There has been a lot of attention recently and several newspaper articles written on the general question about blacks who served in the Confederacy and how many served, whether they served willingly, and that sort of thing. Have you been able to do much research on this?

NW: Well, my grandfather has been quoted in newspapers, The Commercial Appeal out of Memphis and the Lauderdale County Enterprise, the county paper there at home, as saying that if he had wanted, he could have left any time during the War, but he didn't. So I read him to be typical.

SP: What do you know about his, I guess we might say, his political views? Obviously, there have been a lot of changes from his day to this.

NW: After the war was over there was a lot of unrest in and about the Memphis area. Especially among the blacks, and they were really getting to riot. They met and met. Finally they decided that they wanted somebody to come in and talk to them. Of all the people in the United States, I'll bet you can't guess who they invited to come talk to them. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

SP: That is interesting.

NW: He obliged their request. He went and spoke with them. They met for three or four days, so my grandfather said, when the thing wound down in the end, Gen. Forrest had basically one thing to say. He said, AThese people in office, they're not doing what they are supposed to do. When it comes time to vote, just be sure you go vote and vote their a**** out. Then my grandfather, who could not read or write his name in boxcar letters, came back to Lauderdale County and every time they said, let's vote, he's going to vote and he really didn't care if he was the only Democrat in Lauderdale County, because he hated the Republicans with a passion.

SP: What do you say to those who, today, try to remove Confederate flags and monuments from public display?

NW: You can't erase history. That's history. It's a disservice to people on both sides to say, Let's omit it.

SP: What was your experience growing up in the South? Was it a good experience? Bad experience?

NW: I've had no problem. I've done any and everything I wanted to do at any age. Of course, I wasn't trying to do things out of reason. My kids were raised as far south as you can go and still be in the United States, there in Florida. My daughter graduated from FSU in Criminology at age 20. My son graduated high school here and went on and graduated Annapolis the same year I retired. He's in the Reserves now. He's a Lieutenant Commander. He works for IBM. The number two man in the southeast. So, I don't...the South is not a problem. The problem is with people who are looking for problems or who make problems, I guess. Regardless of color.

SP: If the South had won, do you think we'd be better off than we are now?

NW: I don't see where we could have been any worse off. That's my opinion.

SP: Do you think Southern blacks would be better off if the South had won?

NW: Perhaps so. Because, you see, what the Yankees don't tell you in the history books is that people back then lived as extended families. They went to the same churches; named on the same church rolls; buried in the same cemeteries. The problems almost look to me to be like they're mythical.

SP: The Confederate flag that flies over the Statehouse in South Carolina and the Georgia and Mississippi state flags, include the Confederate flag design and have been in the news a lot as political controversies in those states. I'd be interested to know what your view is on those controversies.

NW: Well, I'll tell you the same thing that I told reporters who have interviewed me in all of those states. I believe the people of each state are intelligent enough to sit down, discuss, and make their own decisions about that flag. Part of the problem that I see occurring is due to the fact that you have some outsiders run in and are half-competent and make suggestions, then they pack up and leave and leave the local folks to live with it.

SP: What do you see when you see the Confederate flag? What does it meant to you?

NW: To me it represents a point in time when there was great stress in this country. And, going back to where you were talking about the flag flying over these capitols, if blood is on it, then it is wrong. The American flag flew in the same war. The American flag was flying when the Native Americans were run off of their property and forced to go on reservations. There is just as much or more blood on it than there would be on the Confederate battle flag.

SP: If you had been alive at the time, back in the 1860's, would you have been willing to fight for the South?

NW: I probably would have been right along there with my granddaddy. You see, what people don't realize, when the Yankees came south, they were hoodlums. The first thing they did was rape the black women, then they raped the black missy girls, you know, those that are approaching young womanhood. Then the jokers went and got drunk before they could rape the white women. Well, now if that was enough to make the white Southerners mad enough to go fight them, then why in the hell couldn't the black Southerners be just as angry? He's had a double dose before the white Southerner had a first dose.

SP: That's an interesting point.

NW: Then they proceeded to burn the houses to the ground. Now if the house I was living in was burned to the ground, would it make a whole lot of difference whether it was my house or my master's house? Now if racism had existed like the Yankees would like to lead people to believe, when the master and his older sons went off to war, and we're talking about the boys twelve years old and older, who is left to take care of the missus and the children? Did anything happen to them? No. They were respected, guarded and taken care of. If racism had existed like the Yankees want you to believe it existed, explain to me how in the world all of those white babies lived sucking a black mammy's titty.

SP: There's a lot of press coverage today given to the state of race relations, a lot of talk about how bad race relations are. Do you agree with that or do you think...

NW: The people who are saying that, most of them: where do they live? Where do they come from? And what do they represent? The majority of them?

SP: I guess they're newspaper reporters.

NW: That's right. And you see, this country is controlled by that old dirty Yankee money that controls the media. That's the electronic media and the printed media. See, all your major networks, major newspapers, are controlled by who? Yankees!

SP: So, based on your experience, you'd say that it is something that's pretty much the media's making a big deal out of...

NW: They're selling papers and air time.

SP: And on a personal level...

NW: They don't give a damn what happened or what will happen. The more controversy that can be stirred up, the more papers they sell.

SP: You've been interviewed a lot in the newspapers, do you find a ready audience for your sort of talks and your perspective?

NW: Yes. You see, I restrict my speaking to SCV camps or SCV sponsored activities, United Daughters of the Confederacy, and Civil War Round Table meetings. Now sometimes they might invite the public but they are the people that invited me and if one is off the wall, people could raise the question, I'll tell them where to get off right in a hurry. Because, my position is, you can't argue with me about what my grandfather said he did and what happened to him.

SP: So you just cut straight to the point?

NW: That's right. And see, what I find in traveling, people are all saying the same thing. After they hear me speak and we sit around and talk afterwards, people my age and older, especially if they're old, I remember my great-great-great somebody, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, or somebody, said something happened in our family between the races. And everything is positive. These are all people who come from different places, different names, different incidents, but the underlying thing is that the people were concerned about each other, black and white. They were caring for each other.

SP: What's been your main source of research on your grandfather? Has it been personal papers?

NW: Personal papers, pictures...

SP: Have you been able to go back and do much research as far as newspapers from the time, archives, and that sort of thing?

NW: We have the newspapers right here in the house. And then other people have been curious and they have researched and sent me copies of stuff they've researched. Some pictures.

SP: In the research and reading that you've done, do you have any idea about how many others there may have been like Napoleon?

NW: See, there are some that are not even countedY what about all of those who stayed back and were working in foundries, making weapons? You know, cannons, rifles, muskets? If it had been a race thing, don't you think those damn things would have blown up in Johnny Reb's face? I happen to have had the chance to be in Rome, Georgia to speak. I was carried to where they would test fire the cannons across the river there shooting into the riverbank right. Blacks were there. They also carried me to a place in Alabama called The Furnace where they were smelting pig iron to make weapons and blacks were involved there. That's just one locality. The same thing happened all over.

SP: So, have you had a lot of contact with others who tell a similar story?

NW: A good example is Robert Drake, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote about my grandfather in a past issue of Southern Partisan. Robert Drake's grandfather, W. B. Drake, and my grandfather, Louis were two of the three that always traveled together for these reunions. So Robert's grandfather, my grandfather, and Mr. J. Buchanan were referred to as Athe big three by all three families. All of them lived in Lauderdale County.

SP: Are those the three men in the picture that was published ...

NW: That's right. The one that's in the center is W.B. Drake, the taller one. Then, inside was a lengthy article about the three of them, their escapades going to and from reunions. You know, there's no way that you can make me believe that he could go to 39 reunions if he wasn't supposed to be there; somebody would have found that out and said, ALook old man, you don't need to come back no more because you ain't got no business being here. He might have gotten away with one or two, but not 39.

SP: I imagine those old veterans were a pretty proud bunch.

NW: And then I have a few letters from other Confederate veterans to my grandfather. You know, they were in their 80's when these letters were written. The major content of these letters, you couldn't do anything but believe they were on a very friendly basis because the only time they would see each other were at reunions.

SP: Do any other examples come to mind?

NW: Well, there is one from an 80 year old white man, a Mr. Hays from Richmond, wrote to my grandfather back in '32 or '33, that he was farming his seven daughters out of Richmond to Washington, DC, New York, overseas, Europe and all. So he would have plenty of time for his gin and tonic. Now an 80 year old white man writing this to an 80 year old black man. There had to have been some bond of friendship, in my opinion.

SP: Absolutely. What other kinds of things were in these letters?

NW: Well that's one letter. Another letter was from a gentleman down in St. Petersburg, Florida after the reunion was in Tampa. This was about 1927. He previously sent to my grandfather some pictures that were taken during this reunion. This letter was kind of like a follow up. He wondered if my grandfather had gotten the pictures and if my grandfather happened to know the names of the beautiful young ladies that were on the floor with them. Now these are 80 year old men. You have to see it to believe it! You don't have any hint about color. It's just man-to-man.

SP: They were still going strong at 80? Well, that's good news. Well, it certainly has been interesting talk to you. I appreciate you taking the time...