“We can't continue like this another day. It's time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality.”
That flag was raised again about 45 minutes later by state officials. It is still the law of South Carolina that this flag cannot be lowered without a vote by 2/3 of both houses of the state legislature. That was part of the compromise when the flag was removed from flying over the state capitol to a pole by the Confederate Memorial on the state capitol grounds.
The "stars and bars" flag is commonly assumed to be the flag of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War era. It was not. It was a battle flag used first by the Army of Virginia and later picked up as a flag carried into battle by other units of the Confederate Army. It later became the symbol of post-war resistance to everything the South resented about losing the war and all of the difficulties of reconstruction. The KKK soon began featuring this flag, along with the Christian Cross at its rallies.
I remember during my college years at Duke in the 1950s that it became romanticized as a symbol of the "glories of the Old South," as depicted in the first part of "Gone With the Wind." It also represented the "states rights" cry that blamed everything on the federal government. It would often be waved as young guys chanted "The South's Gonna Rise Again."
Later, during the 1960s Civil Rights era of struggle and violence, it more and more became the symbol for the anger and sometimes violence of those white men who blamed all their misfortunes on the mandated desegregation and government control from Washington.
As time went on it seemed to become more and more entrenched as a symbol of hatred and defiance. So, to those people, having their symbol forcefully removed from public display will reinforce their sense of defeat and shame -- and their reaction of violence.
I hope, with leadership, starting with President Obama and people like Strom Thurmond's son Sen. Paul Thurmond of South Carolina, we can get through this phase without more violence.
As one who grew up in small town Georgia and who knows people on both sides of this divide, I agree that we must seize this opportunity and relegate the shameful symbols of oppression and hatred to museums and history books. They have no place in current displays of our collective honor.
And yet I hope this can be done without further fanning the flames of violence. Take down the flags, fold them and put them away in museums rather than burning them or dragging them through the mud. I understand the impulse to do that, but that would simply do to one group of people what the display of the flag in places of honor has so painfully done to another group of people. I'm not trying to draw a moral equivalence to the two sides -- far from it. But I am suggesting that we act to correct a wrong rather than to exact revenge.
Do this -- and do it in the spirit of those who died in Mother Emanuel Church, not in the spirit of the man who went there to kill them.
Ralph
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