I Get It....
Several of my English friends have written asking for my thoughts on the retirement of the Confederate flag from southern government facilities after the tragic Charleston murders. Their questions and opinions have been well meaning and informed, and my thanks for their 'ponderings'.
I have an opinion - removal of the Confederate Battle Flag is long overdue. It belongs in a museum along with explanations how the cause of human slavery tarnished a region and a peoples.
Few folks are more southern than me. I spent the first part of my life in and around Birmingham, Alabama, the 1960s symbol of white obstinacy and violence to defend the color line. I went to segregated schools, and lustily sang Dixie at half time at football games. I once saw hundreds of black teenagers arrested for protesting in the streets of Gadsden, Alabama. I even met and chatted for a while with George Wallace, the political demagogue of his time.
Civil rights leader of the time - Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the right hand person of Martin Luther King), 3rd from left, and Floyd Mekissick, the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality (straw hat) led hundreds south from Memphis through Mississippi in the summer of 1966 demonstrating for civil rights. Photographs by yours truly.
Likewise, I heard Martin Luther King speak and even marched in Mississippi for a time in 1966, coming down firmly on the side of enlarged human rights. I saw and experienced it all - the hatred, the march of change and the bitter resistance of an earlier white generation.
This photo was taken by yours truly in the summer of 1966 when African-Americans and white sympathizers were on a pro-civil rights march in Mississippi. As one can observe, not everyone embraced this larger view of American freedom. The use of the Confederate flag in reaction to this event was all too normal.
Yes, I get it that it that today the Confederate flag for the majority of white folks, including 99% of my relatives, is about heritage, not hate. No one enjoys fried chicken, mashed potatoes, grits and Tennessee bourbon more than me (and my waist line shows it). The Crimson Tide is still my team every autumn. It is regional pride, and all sections of the country have such local pride.
The South has changed for the better in the past half century....air conditioning has cooled our temperaments and, if you haven't noticed, the majority of football players in the Southeastern conference are our black brothers. I get all this.
Alabama is where my grandparents, great grandparents, great-great, and great, great, great grandparents are buried. Three of my great, great grandfathers died in Confederate service during the Civil War. Two of my great grandfathers were at the Crater in Petersburg and one at Pickett's Charge. Alabama is where most of my paternal cousins still live, nicest people in the world. I get it.
But, I also absorbed in my youth the strong tenants of Alabama and Tennessee Methodism, that one does not do to one's neighbor what one does not want done to oneself. Sang, heard, prayed it and occasionally in my life, preached it. And have tried to live it. I got it.
So, when in response to Charleston, an African American writer states that the battle flag is a symbol of white supremacy and racial terror for many of her race, I get that to. Because I know it is true. I have seen it for generations with my own eyes. Even Hollimans I know who are African-American and live in the South have told me.
Mississippi blacks on that humid, hot day almost 50 years ago, did not wave the Confederate flag. They waved the Stars and Stripes.
I have pride in the region of my birth in these United States. But I have nothing but anger that slavery embedded itself centuries ago in the southern economy and over time convinced my ancestors that persons of color were inferior beings. And that so many suffered as a result.
In reality the pre-Civil War plantation was a slave labor camp with a big house of a few served by many. It took force to keep slaves from running away. Nothing prideful about that part of southern history; just disgusting and tragic.
So, yes, remove the flags that represented such terrible values and put them in museums. Study our history, celebrate the good parts and learn from the tragic. Will we as a people ever get it?
PS - I found an excellent map on the web today which traces the Atlantic slave trade. Notice how in the 18th century the number of ships sailing from Africa to the Chesapeake Bay region significantly increased.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003
As ever comments welcome....
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