The Confederate Flag and Me

A couple months ago an asshole neighbor of mine erected a large Confederate flag in his back yard. My first reaction was, "Oh shit!" My second reaction was acknowledging that he was exactly the kind of insensitive jerk who would do something that disgusting. Then I started thinking about another family living farther down the street - an African-American couple with two teenaged children and I became sick at the message that asshole neighbor was sending. He took it down a few days later because he got tired of everybody telling him how repugnant it was.

Defenders of the flag say it is about heritage, not racism, and if you are offended you just don't know history. Well, I do know history. That flag began its retched existence in 1861 as the battle ensign of the Army of Northern Virginia. The design was so popular it was incorporated as the canton on the official flag of the Confederacy in 1863, the so called "White Man's Flag." The designer of the flag, William Thompson, explained the white field,

"As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause....As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism. Another merit in the new flag is, that it bears no resemblance to the now infamous banner of the Yankee vandals."

After the South surrendered and Reconstruction began, a movement began among white Southerners to free the South from the rule of carpetbaggers (Yankees), freedmen (former slaves), and scalawags (liberal Southerners who supported racial integration). These "Redeemers" worked to return the South to the days of white rule and black servitude. The Confederate flag became the standard for Rebel reunions and a symbol of the Redeemers. In 1894, after Jim Crow segregation was firmly established, the state of Mississippi incorporated the Confederate ensign into the state flag.

The flag went to sleep at this point only to be reborn when Yankees started "imposing" the hated concept of Civil Rights on the nation. In 1956, Georgia added the Confederate flag to its state flag. Also around this time the Ku Klux Klan replaced the American flag in their marches with the Rebel flag.

And so it is that, except for about eighteen months at the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederate flag has always been a loud and proud symbol of racial hatred in America. The heritage it recalls is one of hatred and racial divide.

Selma, 1965