Darwin Branch Givens

 

 Grave of Darwin Branch Givens, born 1858 and died 1942.  In addition to his gravestone, there is a marble marker inscribed with, 

As a young
child, he
alerted Tampa
of the
invading
Yankee
soldiers with
the cry "the
devils are
coming."  
1864
(Photo by William Lees, FPAN, May 2008)

******************************

As I have done nearly everyday since I left the state of Florida, I would post the Colors of the Southern Cross. On this Sunday morning of August 28, 2016, I would post them in the picturesque town of Sylva, North Carolina, at the red light that heads east into downtown Sylva, and west towards Western Carolina College, for some two hours holding conversations with the many who stopped, and in so many instances posing for photos.

I would later make my way west for approximately 2 miles , and come to a stop at the entrance of War Mart where  my previous routine would began again. Three young women would stop and ask of me where I was heading next? When I related to them FLORIDA,  the next question was why?

I told them that during the first American Secession, Paul Revere road through the streets shouting, the British are coming. He was immortalized. Monuments were built of him, with the words inscribed, roads and schools bore his name. No matter that many Brit's still believe that this secession was illegal, and that America is still the property of the British Crown.
 
During America's second Secession,  a baby boy that bore the honorable Givens name, ran through the streets of Tampa,  Florida shouting, the Yankees are coming! He now lies in the cemetery in downtown Tampa, with a plaque bearing his name His actions enabling the citizens to repel the carnage that would surely have been carried out by the northern army with orders to do so. This time secession was legal, while the invasion was not.

No monuments were built, no schools or roads in young Givens name. Only the graves of the Southern soldier's who would hear his cry, alongside others who now lie nearby. Their resting places now being vandalized because of a Southern Governor who would perpetuate a lie. Their honorable vilified, their lives given,  now taxed to shame. The memory and accounting of the honor earned by their African family, who loyally served and supported the Confederate Cause in an humble and noble capacity now forced into oblivion by those who write the schoolhouse books.

And not to forget the print media who excuses the North and the then supposed civilized world, to include the African Kings who were all complicit in the economic institution of slavery,  and most of the evil associated with it.

I told these babies, and the crowd that now surrounded me to listen, that FLorida had now become the new cesspool of Southern social and cultural genocide, to include the eradication of the teachings in the Christian Bible, and all memory of Jesus Christ. I as a messenger had to tell the people of this unholy game that was being played out again. 

God bless you!

HK 
Former Student Regent, University of Minnesota