Al Arnold
I am a native-born Mississippian. I am African American. I am a Christian. I am a Husband. I am a father of two boys and one girl. I am a Southerner. Thanks to an ancestry.com DNA test, I can be a little more specific. Eighty-four percent of my DNA is from Africa. Fifteen percent of my DNA is from Europe. The remaining one percent is of West Asian descent. My ancestral roots are largely from Nigeria and Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) with trace roots from West Africa and West Europe. It is estimated that over 3.5 million slaves were transported to the Americas from Nigeria during the slave trade. It is estimated that over two million Scandinavians immigrated to America between 1820 and 1920. Somewhere in the beautiful and yet ugly mix of things, my African ancestry mixed with my Viking ancestry and I am who I am today by the Grace of God.
I am a descendent of a proud Black Confederate and a former slave. It is in this Grace that I have come to appreciate all of whom I am and all of whom others are. If they belong to the family of God through Christ, I am all the more compelled to love them. If they do not belong to the family of God through Christ, I am all the more compelled to love them.
alarnold@orderlyforlee.com
www.orderlyforlee.com
Facebook: orderlyforlee
Please Review Book at Goodreads.com or Amazon.com
I am a descendent of a proud Black Confederate and a former slave. It is in this Grace that I have come to appreciate all of whom I am and all of whom others are. If they belong to the family of God through Christ, I am all the more compelled to love them. If they do not belong to the family of God through Christ, I am all the more compelled to love them.
alarnold@orderlyforlee.com
www.orderlyforlee.com
Facebook: orderlyforlee
Please Review Book at Goodreads.com or Amazon.com
Robert E. Lee’s Orderly
A Black Youth's Southern Inheritance
Al Arnold is a descendent of a slave, Turner Hall, Jr. “Uncle Turner,” as he was known in his later years, served in the Confederate army as a body servant for two Confederate soldiers and an orderly for Robert E. Lee. As a slave, Turner Hall, Jr. was owned by another prominent Civil War general, Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Al began researching his ancestor’s life in 2008. At a family reunion, he saw a newspaper caption indicating his ancestor, Turner Hall, Jr. served Robert E. Lee as an orderly in the Civil War. To Al’s amaze-ment, his research found a proud Black Confederate who held both Civil War generals in high esteem, even well after the war. At the age of ninety-five, Turner Hall, Jr. cherished a gift from Nathan Bedford Forrest as one of his most treasured possessions.
Al was further intrigued that his great-great-grandfather was a celebrated man in his community of Hugo, Oklahoma. Blacks and Whites commemorated him as Hugo’s “most distinguished citizen” as a result of his Civil War service. Turner Hall, Jr. lived to be a hundred and four years old. He attended the last Civil War reunion in 1938 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Newsreel cameramen captured him displaying his reunion medals as an example of the typical Black Confederate.
In 1940, he was interviewed as a Black Con-federate by a nationwide talk radio show in New York City. Turner Hall, Jr. left a trail for his family that Al has uncovered. Al shares his personal journey into his Confederate heritage as a modern Black man. He makes a connection through the life of his ancestor and embraces the premises that history should unite us instead of divide us. He argues that African Americans dishonor their ancestors by attempting to destroy Confederate heritage and by neglecting the historical impact that slaves had on both sides of the Civil War. These are the honest thoughts of a modern Black man who has wrestled with his Confederate heritage while being a Black Christian man in America and who is connected to two famous Civil War generals.