On Friday, we witnessed history. South Carolina lowered the Confederate battle flag from state capitol grounds. For good.
On the same day, we witnessed the future. Someone, perhaps under the cover of darkness, removed the Confederate battle flag at Stone Mountain Park in DeKalb County. A new one went up almost immediately.
The day’s news events make this clear: the debate in the South over where to fly the Confederate battle flag and how to display other relics and monuments to the Confederacy is far from settled.
Consider the following news items from last week that illustrate the push and pull:
- Democrats in the U.S. House attempted to remove the Mississippi state flag from display in our nation's capitol. The Confederate battle flag makes up part of the Mississippi colors.
- A congressional bid to ban display of the Confederate battle flag in federal cemeteries over Confederate soldiers' graves was put on hold, dividing Congress along party and regional lines.
- Tennessee officials are proposing to block from public view a 16-year-old statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest near an interstate in Nashville. Forrest is widely considered to be the grandfather of the Ku Klux Klan. Memphis is considering removing his remains from a public park and state leaders are considering removing a bust from its State House.
- The Associated Press reports that a former Tennessee mayor wants to create what could be the largest image of the Confederate battle flag in the South — the size of two football fields — to preserve what he says is an important part of American history and his own heritage.
- Alabamian Johnny Cooper, 60, is walking a Confederate battle flag from Montgomery, Ala., to Washington, D.C., to protest efforts to remove the flag from public display.
- A couple of U.S. Representatives from Georgia publicly clashed over what the flag means. Atlanta Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Bloody Sunday, said the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of hate. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican, told AJC reporter Daniel Malloy he doesn't consider the flag a racist symbol.
Our view of the Confederacy and its symbols continue to divide us. The question we must now answer, in Congress, in state houses across the South, in our local communities, is where do we draw the line? What’s an appropriate honor for our foreparents who fought for the Confederacy? What’s an indefensible display of hate?
At issue now is should the Confederate battle flag fly at taxpayer expense anywhere? And what to do with the hundreds of monuments to Confederate generals and politicians who subscribed to the doctrine of white supremacy that defined their time? Should they remain in positions of honor? Are we to start renaming streets and schools?
The debate isn't confined to government. Businesses are weighing in, too. Wal-Mart has pledged to stop selling merchandise bearing the Confederate emblem. AJC reporter Steve Hummer went to Daytona Beach, Fla., last week to write about how an unlikely business is disassociating itself from the flag. NASCAR is asking fans to leave the flags at home. The racing circuit's view of the flag might be at odds with a sizable portion of its fan base.
Where and how we find comfort in honoring the Confederacy without picking at still-tender racial wounds is still very much a developing story. Seeking answers to those questions will guide The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s reporting as we follow events that will define us.
There are lessons to be learned from my home state, South Carolina. Yes, it took the deaths of nine African-American worshippers at the hands of a confessed shooter seeking to start a race war to mute the domino theory. It’s the idea that suggests that moving the Confederate flag from taxpayer-funded public spaces is tantamount to offering consent to erase Confederate history. Everywhere. In all forms.
The overwhelming vote to lower the flag in S.C. says many flag supporters are arriving where many flag opponents have stood for years. The Confederate battle flag will retire to a museum in South Carolina. In a place of honor. But not in conflict with the state and national flags that represent the sovereign governments empowered by all of the governed.
And as far as I know, the next time I visit my hometown of Greenville, S.C., — and I travel the 20 miles between my parents’ home and my in-laws — I will cross Dunbar Street, named for Confederate Captain William Dunbar, who led Dunbar’s Guerrillas. They are renowned for being an especially lethal outfit that fought under the Confederacy.
I’ll travel about 6 miles of Wade Hampton Boulevard, named for Gen. Wade Hampton, whose “red shirts” terrorized would-be black voters during Reconstruction to suppress the vote and keep Democrats in power.
The Confederacy is everywhere in the South. How we deal with it will say more about us than our ancestors.
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