The ‘battle flag’ finally comes down

On Friday of last week, the Confederate flag came down in Charleston, S.C., respectfully retired, with honor, by South Carolina state troopers. It was a modest step forward toward progress, but South Carolina and other states throughout the South must take further action through legislation to ban displays of the Confederate flag outside of its proper historical context.

{mosads}Designed by William Porcher Miles, a former mayor of Charleston and staunch supporter of slavery who believed the slave trade should have been reopened, what is commonly referred to today as the Confederate flag is a variant of this flag designed by Miles and adopted by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Later, this same “battle flag” was resurrected by white supremacists, including the Ku Klux Klan, as a symbol of resistance to integration and to black civil rights, especially the right to vote.

Then-Sen. Strom Thurmond’s (S.C.) use of the flag in his 1948 presidential campaign underscored his pledge to keep blacks in a position of subservience. In 2014, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed into law a bill prohibiting the sale or display of the Confederate flag and banning the flag from state property. And only a few weeks ago, State Sen. Paul Thurmond (R), Strom’s son, spoke out against the Confederate battle flag in the South Carolina legislature, saying, “I am not proud of this heritage.” And so, with the help of daring flagpole climber and New York University Tisch School of the Arts-educated performing artist Bree Newsome, and a cohort of racially and politically diverse and sometimes unwitting collaborators, the flag came down.

Historically, some whites have feared that if they accept black people on a basis of equality, they will be harmed by a resulting loss of power. For these, the flag may be the symbol of the “Lost Cause.” For blacks still undergoing the harsh realities imposed by inequality, this flag is a symbol of tyranny, injustice, trauma and pain — a pain that has been re-inflicted and reinforced perhaps as often as it has been softened by human compassion, cooperation and love both within and across the racial divide. Even among peace-loving Americans working for diversity, inclusion, justice and mercy, for many, it took disturbing events — such as the massacre at Mother Emanuel in Charleston and the recurring contemporary burnings of black churches — for people to begin reflecting freely on the state of mind that made the battle flag acceptable for so long. But then, last week, the flag came down in Charleston.

Like it or not, a change has come over this South and this America; a new opportunity has emerged — but only now, 150 years after Civil War officially ended, six generations later. In the words of University of North Carolina Professor William R. Ferris:

[W]hen we look at the South, the South is a very diverse place with black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Lebanese, Jewish. It’s a rich range of cultural voices that need to be embraced in the most public way … a proud Southerner is a Southerner who is aware of his or her past, and being proud of one’s past does not mean you accept it. It means that you realize that we’ve come through the fire, and we’re headed in another direction.

Bree Newsome has said “enough is enough.” Paul Thurmond has said “I am not proud of this heritage.” Looking forward to the seventh generation, let us say, in the words of Langston Hughes, a poet of mixed European, Native American and African-American heritage, “Let America be America again.” California and South Carolina, across racial and bipartisan lines, have both enacted legislation that refutes the culturally coded message embedded in this symbol, and this matters.

Braxton is Frances L. and Edwin L. Cummings Professor of the Humanities at the College of William and Mary, where she has directed the Middle Passage Project since 1995. Sainato is a freelance writer.