What it means to be Southern
After the church massacre in Charleston, S.C., an extraordinary change began sweeping the South. With Confederate symbols under unprecedented attack, Southerners began to reconsider their heritage: Had the time come to change the way we commemorate the past? Amid this introspection, the AJC is exploring what it means to be Southern in 2015. Today’s article is part of that exploration.
Confederate battle flags were scattered outside Martin Luther King Jr.’s church on Thursday, ratcheting up tensions that have been building over the emblems since a deadly shooting last month at a black church in Charleston, S.C.
The four doormat-size flags were left at the visitor center of the King National Historic Site and adjacent Ebenezer Baptist Church. Both are historic symbols with deep meaning in the city known as the cradle of the civil rights movement. The flags were discovered by a maintenance man just before sunrise.
Ebenezer’s pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, wasted no time labeling the display “a terrorist act” no different than spray-painting swastikas on a synagogue. Federal and state authorities are investigating and reviewing surveillance footage that showed two men placing the flags on the ground.
“Let the message go out that we will not be shaken by this,” Warnock said at a morning news conference. “We will not be intimidated.
One of many recent incidents involving flag
It’s the latest in a series of increasingly confrontational incidents surrounding the Confederate flag and other symbols of the Southern rebellion.
At the South Carolina state Capitol, a scuffle erupted earlier this month between members of the Ku Klux Klan and black activists who were demonstrating simultaneously.
More recently in Georgia, a convoy of trucks bearing Confederate flags interrupted a black child's birthday party in Douglasville. Thefts and threats have erupted over the flag in Conyers and Covington. And weeks after a planned boycott of Stone Mountain — the towering granite monument to the Confederate war dead — a pro-flag rally is planned at the park on Saturday. A law enforcement official said they were preparing for hundreds of protesters.
Much has been made of reconciliation in the wake of last month’s Charleston church massacre, which swiftly led South Carolina lawmakers to remove the Rebel war flag from the statehouse grounds. But taken together, the incidents show a mounting frustration by those who see a threat to the flag as a threat to their heritage.
“Our history is being trashed — you have the government trying to remove history like it didn’t happen,” said Tyler Nicholson, a 24-year-old welder and volunteer firefighter who is an organizer of Saturday’s planned rally at Stone Mountain.
“This is the history,” Nicholson said, “and we have to live with what happened hundreds of years ago.”
Flag at black church called ‘overtly hostile’
Andra Gillespie, a professor at Emory University who specializes in African-American history and politics, called the rash of recent confrontations “jarring” but not surprising.
“It’s not unusual when you have moments of racial progress that you also have a backlash,” Gillespie said.
Nonetheless, she said that Thursday’s actions in Atlanta are particularly antagonistic and up the ante, especially after the shootings in Charleston.
“Going into a black space, a black church, with the Confederate flag is overtly hostile,” she said.
Anger, sadness and silence
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed condemned the act. But the state’s Republican leadership, including Gov. Nathan Deal, remained mum on Thursday.
Around the King historic center and church in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, there was a mix of anger and sadness.
“This breaks my heart. It’s just taking the flag to another level,” said Tracey Jackson, a 45-year-old from Atlanta who lives near the historic church. “That flag represents what happened in the past. And too many people are holding on to that past. It just hurts.”
The clashes are playing out against the backdrop of a simmering political dispute. Georgia shrunk and ultimately removed the Confederate war emblem from its flag more than a decade ago, but other symbols of its Rebel history remain enshrined in law or protected by executive fiat.
Democrats are urging the state to quit celebrating Confederate Memorial Day and Confederate Heritage Month. And the state has stopped selling license plates with the Rebel battle emblem after Deal announced a "redesign" of the tags.
Stone Mountain a hot spot in conflict
But the images of Confederate war leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on Stone Mountain, etched as deeply in Georgia law as the mountain's granite face, are particularly galling to black leaders and other critics who view them as symbols of hate, preserved in perpetuity by the state.
Calls for boycotts of the park have been met by decisions by the attraction's leaders to keep flying Confederate battle flags on the monument's grounds. After Atlanta's City Council endorsed a resolution asking Deal to study giving the monument a makeover, Georgia's Republican leadership has rallied behind the park.
“It’s not a debate that is useful. I don’t think it provides us with any basis for going forward,” Deal said, urging critics to shift their focus instead to the plight of struggling schools.
“If they would exert the same amount of influence and time and effort to try to make sure that the children in our school systems in this state who are in failing schools get a good education, it will erase any of the things that they think the memorials symbolize,” the governor said.
Other Republicans have closed ranks. House Speaker David Ralston said he has a "dim view of politicizing recent tragedies" such as those in Charleston and Chattanooga, Tenn. "You can't change history," he added, "even when it's history that shows our bad behavior."
The "flag rally" at Stone Mountain is another sign the debate will continue. Nicholson, the organizer, asked participants to abstain from alcohol, racial slurs, taunts and violence. He said that Stone Mountain's law enforcement team was given three weeks' notice about the rally and will show up in force.
“We are all about the history, what we inherited and what we believe in,” Nicholson said. “It’s our love for the South — heritage not hate.”
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