Time to furl that flag
Published June 24, 2015
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, June 24, 2015.
Defenders of the Confederate battle flag say it represents heritage, states’ rights and rebellion against authority. It stands for none of those things except in a few fevered minds. In a sober moment following last week’s slaughter of nine people in a church in Charleston, S.C., a lot of people who should have known better are taking steps to remove what many see as a symbol of hatred, slavery, racial violence and white supremacy.
This sudden and long-overdue assault on the Confederate flag — technically, one of the many banners carried by some Southern armies during the Civil War — started quietly enough last Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court said Texas didn’t have to issue license plates that display the Confederate flag. Ultra-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, of all people, sided with the court’s liberal members in rejecting the suit by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
As the court issued its ruling, police searched for the 21-year-old shooter who embraced white supremacist symbols, including the Confederate flag. While the nation mourned, eyes turned to the South Carolina capitol in Columbia. Above the statehouse, the U.S. and South Carolina flags flew at half-staff to honor the dead. Near the building’s main entrance, however, a Confederate flag remained atop a 30-foot pole as mandated by state law.
The Confederate flag largely disappeared after the Civil War, but it roared back into political life in 1948, when the Democratic Party split over desegregation. The Dixiecrats, the Southern rump party led by South Carolina Gov. (and later U.S. Senator) Strom Thurmond, wrapped itself in the flag. Though the Dixiecrats didn’t survive the 1948 election, the Confederate flag — as a symbol of protest against integration and civil rights — did.
The all-white South Carolina legislature hoisted the flag atop the capitol dome in 1961 as a political thumb-in-the-eye. In 1990, after massive public protests, S.C. lawmakers moved the flag to the capitol grounds.
This compromise did not hold after last week’s massacre at Emanuel AME Church. On Monday, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called on state lawmakers to move the flag to a museum. The governor, a Republican in a deep-red state, called the Confederate flag “a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.”
Others followed Haley’s lead. Virginia’s governor said the flag will no longer appear on specialty license plates; North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory on Tuesday asked lawmakers to pass a similar measure. The speaker of Mississippi’s House said lawmakers should remove the Confederate emblem from its state flag. Retailers Wal-Mart, Sears and Amazon said they would no longer sell Confederate-themed merchandise.
It’s sad that Americans won’t deal with all-too-easy access to handguns after yet another mass shooting. But banishing the Confederate banner from government spaces is some consolation.
Confederate soldiers laid down their arms 150 years ago at Appomatox. It’s long past time for state governments to take down their flag.
