The Public Policy: Furl That Banner
Wyman, Hastings
r H E PU B LII:C P OLI, C~ by Hastings Wyman Furl That Banner The Confederate flag remains a most visible battle scar. Furl that Banner, for 'tis wear3,; Round its staff'tis drooping...
...But don't count on peace just yet...
...In Mississippi, the state Supreme Court recently ruled that the current flag is not the creation of state law and Democratic Gov...
...If there was some racism along the way, well, that was the way people thought back then...
...The NAACP opposed the compromise and its president, Kweisi Mfumi, says he will attempt to expand the tourism boycott of South Carolina, asking cooperation from organized labor, athletic groups, and the movie industry...
...The problem with "the flag"and other Confederate memorabilia66 July~August 20 o o _9 The American Spectator is that their meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder...
...a net- ! work newsman asked me...
...And while Southern whites intensely dislike the African-American strategy of mobilizing "outsiders" against the South on racial issues, that strategy has been the basis for virtually every pro-black change that has occurred in the South, including the abolition of slavery and segregation...
...Today, with the South's public schools integrated, its legislatures containing significant minorities of African-Americans, and its white leaders--Garter, Clinton, Gore, the Bushes, even ex-"Dixiecrat" Thurmond--basking not in rebellion but in national respectability, the Confederate flag issue has been an especially unwelcome intrusion...
...White Southerners have a history different from--and often at odds with-the rest of the nation...
...Ronnie Musgrove has appointed a commission to design a new state flag...
...The answer is, of course, yes, but also no...
...66 percent of blacks want to change it...
...In Georgia, when then-Coy...
...Among the exhibits was a late nineteenth-century photograph of Robert E. Lee's statue on Monument Avenue...
...In a recent journey to Richmond, Virginia, I toured the Museum of the Confederacy, next to the home where Jefferson Davis lived during the Civil War...
...Among the demonstrators outside the state Capitol during the debate was an African-American draped in chains...
...Jim Gilmore, who has made substantial overtures to his state's African-American community since taking office, has staved offa tourist boycott of the Old Dominion by agreeing to meet regularly with a group of Virginia's black leaders...
...rants, movies, and parks were open to whites only, as were our parents' jobs...
...JAr ~ t's about race, isn't it...
...Touch it not--unfold it never, Let it droop there, furled forever...
...Jim Hodges, a Democrat, signed the measure, which takes effect this July 1. The flag issue has been "fraught with partisan politics," says the former Democratic house Speaker, Rep...
...So if white Southerners have an institutional memory of a graceful and courageous past that ended with a failed revolution, black Southerners have an equally strong memory of the oppressive and degrading underside of that same history...
...Like they put on them old Confederate uniforms, I had to put on my chains," he told a reporter...
...Republican Gov...
...Indeed the flag legislation in South Carolina included a provision to make it more difficult for counties and municipalities to remove memorials to any war, or to rename streets that honor past heroes...
...Honoring the Confederacy and its symbols is honoring our history, our ancestors, even who we are today...
...And while the Stars-and-Bars doesn't need to be on top of the state capitol, it is a badge of ethnic identity, similar to the shamrock or the Star of David...
...Furl it, fold it, it is best...
...That history has been handed down from one generation to the next, both in families and--in my youth in the 194o's and 5o's--in schools and other institutions...
...But whites stop far short of calling it "the Confederate swastika," as some black legislators have done...
...Bob Sheheen, "fraught with black-white politics, and fraught with outside-the-General Assembly politics...
...Our schools, churches, restauWhite Southerners have a history different from the rest of the nation...
...flag on the dome, and 23 black Democrats who believe the compromise still gives the flag too much visibility...
...Even if the Palmetto State has disposed of the flag issue-and it probably hasn'tsimilar battles are expected elsewhere...
...For many white Southerners, observances and historical memories of the Confederate era are not motivated by conscious racism, but rather by patriotism toward one's region-a separate nation for four years...
...Thus proponents of the flag bill hope this will be the Civil War's last batfie, not the beginning of a protracted rewrite of the state's history, set literally in stone when whites were completely in charge...
...The betting is on an antebellum "Magnolia State" flag...
...In most cases, only intervention by an alliance of Southern blacks and northern whites--met by strenuous opposition from Southern whites-ended the South's various "peculiar institutions...
...Thus, South Carolina's white establishment --governors from both parties, the chamber of commerce, even Bob Jones-has sided with AfricanAmericans on removing the flag from the capitol dome...
...The 56 opponents were an odd coupling of 27 white Republicans and 6 white Democrats who favor keeping the HASTINGS W%aAN has published Southern Political Report, a biweekly newsletter, since 1978...
...Recently in Jackson, a black city councilman removed a Confederate flag from council chambers...
...Hodges and Republican House Speaker David Wilkins trying to stay out of the limelight...
...Much like African-Americans, ItalianAmericans, et al., we are in some respects a hyphenated group--Southern-Americans...
...Its Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism has released figures showing the economic contribution of tourism reached $15 .6 billion in 1999, up 11.1 percent over 1998...
...On every May 11, the students at my Camden, South Carolina grammar school observed Confederate Memorial Day, often going down to the cemetery to watch elderly ladies from the United Daughters of the Confederacy place wreaths on the graves of Confederate soldiers...
...Round its staff'tis drooping dreary...
...In Virginia, black leaders have objected to a commemorative "Confederate History Month...
...Legislators in both parties--and of both races-worked hard to find a compromise acceptable to a majority...
...Indeed, this Cold War may continue...
...And the issue could even come up in President Clinton's Arkansas, where in 1923 the legislature added a star to its flag to represent the state's membership in the Confederacy...
...Convention business, however, accounts for only 4 percent of tourism in the state...
...We were taught to address adults as "ma'am" or "sir," unless they were "colored people," whom in any ease we rarely observed in anything other than menial roles...
...Furl that banner, softly, slowly...
...The South's powerful representatives in Congress even prevented passage of federal anti-lynching laws...
...For black Southerners, Confederate symbols are a bitter reminder of a history in which the region's white majority enslaved, then segregated, black people...
...The key vote came on May lo in the South Carolina House of Representatives...
...Walton McLeod told me, "and didn't get over till the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed...
...In addition to politics, the lawmakers were aware of the historical context of the issue...
...Zell Miller, a Democrat, tried to remove the Stars and Bars from the state flag in 1993, he immediately began to lose popularity and was barely re-elected in 1994 . Lawmakers say the flag issue is likely to come up again next year...
...Last year the boycott had mixed results...
...The issue is a good one for civil rights groups, in part because the Confederate flag has little support among Northern whites, who divide over other black-white issues, such as affirmative action...
...A recent poll showed 68 percent of Georgia's white voters favor keeping the current flag with the Confederate emblem...
...Southern nationalism, complete with a resurgence in Confederate flagwaving, became the political norm in the Deep South and, to a lesser extent, in the rest of the old Confederacy...
...Once again, it was whites against blacks, Southerners against Yankees...
...Winston Churchill wrote that it takes 2oo years for a country to get over a civil war, This one still has 65 years to go...
...Treat it gently--it is holy...
...And we've had a Cold War since then...
...The Civil War started in 1861," Democratic state Rep...
...On the other hand, while racism is not the motive for much Southern reverence for Confederate symbols, when I was growing up in the South, racist law and custom so permeated our daily lives, as well as our history, that we seldom took note of it...
...The 63 supporters of the compromise included 33 white Republicans, z 7 white Democrats, and 3 black Democrats...
...One proposal under discussion would revert to the pre-Civil War flag, which featured the state seal...
...from "The Conquered Banner," by Father Abram Joseph Ryan, chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia T he South Carolina legislature, after years of contentious debate, voted in May to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol dome and place it behind the Confederate soldiers' memorial immediately in front of the building...
...For most of the century following the end of the Civil War, black Southerners were excluded from jury duty, from voting, from most occupations, and from all public educational facilities except those-- almost always inferior- set aside for them...
...At least 123 conventions scheduled for locations in South Carolina were canceled...
...At the Presbyterian Church, a graceful old building designed by Robert Mills, we took pride in knowing that the original bells in the steeple had been melted down and transformed into Confederate cannon...
...Leaders in both parties handled the matter gingerly, with both Gov...
...When the Supreme Court made its 1954 ruling declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional, we fell into a familiar role...
...The base of the statue was covered in flowers in the design of the Confederate flag-the battle-flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, which Lee led...
...Whether the NAACP's tourism boycott has been--or will be--successful is unclear...
...The American Spectator _9 July/August 20 o o 67...
Vol. 33 • July 2000 • No. 6
