The news has been one heck of a place lately. In the last few weeks we’ve seen a landmark Supreme Court ruling be made, a mass shooting, the burnings of several churches, and debate over a flag that has long been considered a symbol of Southern pride.
For those of you who either have no connection to the outside world or live under a rock, the propriety of flying the Confederate flag has come into question since it was shown to be flying over the city of Charleston, South Carolina, after the horrific shooting of nine individuals worshipping at the Mother Emanuel AME Church on June 17.
Before I dive into the debate, I’m going to explain the history of the Confederate flag because it’s kind of complicated and full of facts that people may not know. The flag that we know today as the Confederate flag was not the OG Confederate flag. The OG Confederate flag was the “Stars and Bars,” a flag with a red stripe, a white stripe, and a blue stripe, and seven stars representing the first seven states to secede from the Union. As more states seceded, more stars were added to the flag until they totaled 13 stars. This flag was, until 1863, the flag of the Confederate nation, where it was replaced with the one shown in the cover photo.
The flag that we consider the Confederate flag was actually a rejected design that was then relegated to being the unit flag of none other than General Robert E. Lee, where it became known as the “Battle Flag of Northern Virginia.” It remained such until Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April of 1865.
It then fell out of use…until 1948. Senator James Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was seeking the presidency under the States Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrats). He had split from the larger Democrats after finding that President Harry S. Truman’s re-election campaign was decisively pro-civil rights. Now, if you look at the official platform of the SRDP (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25851) and take a special look at Article IV, you will see that the party stood for the “segregation of the races.” To make matters worse, at all of his campaign stops, Thurmond flew American flags (all right), state flags (all right), and the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (oh no). In summary, a politician who helped form a party with a racist platform is now flying what we now know as the Confederate flag.
Then in the next two decades, other people began flying the Confederate flag. Some of these people were just your Average Joes, your girls-next-door, the guy you work with at the office everyday. They flew it to express their pride in their heritage, their pride in being Southern. But other people were flying it too—people with malicious intentions. It started showing up regularly at rallies for the Ku Klux Klan, and at meetings of White Citizens Councils. “Yikes” is an absolute understatement.
And so we arrive at the present day. In the aftermath of a violent tragedy, we are left to decide what this flag means. In the din of all the debate, there are people who ask “If it really matters what the flag means, why haven’t we discussed it before now?” I think it is because before the Charleston shooting, many Americans didn’t consider what that flag represented or what flying it implies. They didn’t need to. Most of the country has no ties to the South, or even to the Civil War. But now that we are faced with a government building letting the flag fly after a racially motivated crime, we are faced with a multitude of questions.
As I’ve said before, many people fly this flag as a symbol of Southern heritage. My question is: why? There are so many things that the South has given this nation to be proud of that have never been used by racist organizations/people to promote racist, violent agendas. Coke was first bottled in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Maya Angelou, Eudora Welty, Mark Twain, Elvis, and many other famous people have come from Dixie. The world’s first heart and lung transplants were both done in Jackson, Mississippi. Savannah, Georgia was the birthplace of both the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts. New Orleans has Bourbon Street, Memphis has Beale Street. Jazz, blues, and rock all found their beginnings in the music of the South. William Faulkner’s estate is in a place no other than Oxford, and his writings are based on a fictionalized version of Lafayette County. George Washington Carver, the famous African American inventor, hailed from Georgia. It’s not like we don’t have a ton of things to be proud of. So why do we need to express our pride with that flag? Why? Why, when it offends so many people and has been embraced by so many offensive organizations, do we need to hold onto it?
There are those who say that those bad intentions were not the original intentions of the flag. Whether or not you agree with that, there is one thing that is certain: it is associated with violent acts and racist agendas now, and that is the legacy that will always stick with it.
Which is why I ask: Can’t we take the rich history and endless contributions of the South and remember all that? It is a shame that we have been taking a flag that has been a symbol of war, discord, discrimination, and violent racism and using it as our rallying point for a history full of so many other things to remember. Of course, everyone is entitled to do as they will, but I am going to urge you to consider what the Confederate flag symbolizes to others around you before you fly it.
