An Inkling
My first
realization that some found the Confederate flag offensive came in 1972. I was a junior in Lee High School, in
Huntsville, Alabama. We were the Lee
High Generals, and our gym wall featured a huge mural of General Lee on his
horse carrying a rebel flag – until we came to school one day and found that
the flag portion had been painted over.
For an Alabama school in that era, integration had gone fairly well for
us. But my white friends were offended
that someone would mess with General Lee, and our thoughts did not go much deeper
than that. Maybe we would have thought
more deeply if we had bothered to ask our black friends what they thought.
I had
grown up reading Civil War history. My
scout troop camped at Shiloh and Chickamauga, and I was well versed in the battles
of that war. In the romanticized ways
those stories were told to me I came to delight in how the underdog south and
its generals outfoxed the damnyankees (one word). For me the stars and bars were a symbol of
independence, bravery, and regional pride.
So I took great pleasure in the banner of General Lee with the flag, and
had a hard time understanding why anyone felt the need to paint it over.
But I was
not seeing with the eyes of those descended from the independent and brave people
my ancestors enslaved. The flag
obviously meant something else entirely to them, and particularly so when they
repeatedly saw its most enthused supporters waving it at rallies filled with
contempt for them. Sometime in my
twenties my view of the flag changed. The thinly veiled contempt of many flag enthusiasts for the black people
who had become my friends persuaded me that the banner was now fit only for
museums, and not state houses or public rallies.
It’s
amazing that we’re still having this same conversation 43 years later! I am grateful for the Republican leaders in
South Carolina who are taking a political risk to do what some wise Huntsville school
leader did with a paint brush all the way back in 1972. Better (very) late than never.
No longer
proud,
Keith
P.S. The best
simple statement that I’ve seen about the flag by a white Christian
southerner came from Russell Moore, a Southern Baptist leader.
