In April of 2000, the South Carolina legislature voted to remove the rectangular Confederate battle flag from atop the Capitol in favor of flying a more traditional square battle flag. The newer battle flag flies on a pole in front of the Capitol in a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers.
On Jan. 4, 2008, the NAACP in South Carolina stated that with the Democratic candidates for president arriving to attend the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday march on Jan. 21. According to a press release from BET.com. “America is a mean country and South Carolina is a meaner state,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the state chapter of the NAACP.
Randolph’s statement is indicative of the feelings that the Confederate flag still invokes in black Americans across the country. According to the same press release, the NAACP says that arguments maintaining that the Confederate flag is just a symbol of southern pride neglect concerns of the hurt that it inflicts on African Americans.
Events such as this leave many wondering if such a symbol can be compared to the Nazi swastika. The Nazi swastika was unequivocally a symbol of hate, representing one of the most oppressive governments in history in its persecution of free peoples as well as the Jewish community of Europe. No doubt, for the African American community, the Confederate flag represents much the same as it represented the very people who sought to continue the oppression of the slaves during the Civil War.
Yet there is another side to the Confederate flag that seems to be lost amongst the controversy of the object itself. Very few seem to view the Confederate flag as a symbol of state freedom, which is the freedom guaranteed by the Constitution for the states to administer their own laws for their people. While the NAACP, and indeed much of the African American community, views the flag as a symbol of bigotry and hatred, others view it as a reminder of how the federal government sustained the notion of a unified country.
While it is true that the South’s revolution against the federal government was done to preserve their way of life, it must be understood that the freeing of the slaves was not done altruistically. It was a political move done militarily to cripple the southern agricultural economy. Nevertheless, the South lost the war and the United States is solid and not two countries as would have been the outcome had the Confederates won the war.
On the other hand, because the Confederate flag represented, then and now, the attempt of the southern states to continue on with their way of life it can be reasonably assumed that had they not made the radical choice to secede the slaves may not have been freed in retaliation for the havoc being wreaked upon the country during the Civil War. Indeed, the African American community can look at the Confederate flag and be reminded of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to endure in the face of open hatred as a way of rising against such unfounded emotions. This can be done, especially considering the upcoming holiday in remembrance of King.
As most oppressed cultures often do, the African Americans of this country can look upon the symbols of their oppressors and remember why it was that they endured. Should the South cling to the edifice of a dead culture? Not necessarily, but southerners can look upon the Confederate flag as a reminder that human lives are far too precious for one to try and oppress another based upon any factor such as race, class, or skin color. The white southerners can look upon the Confederate flag and be proud that ancestors of theirs stood for what they believed in as well as African Americans can be proud for having such a symbol stand to remind others that the sins of the past should not be repeated.