CONFEDERATE FLAGS CONTINUE TO BE DISPLAYED ON CARS IN THE SOUTH

…A typical front Southern Vehicle license plate

 

Conflicts over Confederate monuments, memorabilia and merchandise are rising all across the country. 

 

Well, it only took over 150 years, but as of last week, the last of four monuments that embodied mis-placed pride in the racial oppression of slavery, they were finally removed from various New Orleans public properties.  Of course, the last one removed was of the Supreme Commander of the Confederate Army, General Robert E. Lee.

 

The monuments were not in areas where you would normally find many tourists.  They instead sat at the entrance to the city’s largest park, on a greenway in a major traffic circle and in one of its major city squares.

 

Robert E. Lee Statue removal in New Orleans

 

Democratic Mayor, Mitch Landrieu marked the historic moment with a rousing speech that sought to end nearly two years of heated debate in the city over what the monuments said about its past.

 

“They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for,” Landrieu said, adding that Lee and the Confederate army fought against the United States. “They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.”

 

The demonstration against the various monuments around the city started back in April and immediately became fodder for the cable news networks that eventually spanned the globe.

 

There quickly began with 24 hour protest vigils against these emblems of Southern History and honor to the war against slavery.

 

Yes, there were other issues that started the American Civil War that killed a total of 620,000 Americans on both sides of the war.  However the rise of the abolitionists against slavery was the main reason that there became a fight between state’s rights and federal rights.  The Southern states felt that the states should decide their own right to maintain slavery, while the Union states supported a federal law against slavery.  There was also a difference in the economics of the Southern states that survived mainly on the low labor costs of slavery for their cotton industry, versus the industrialized areas of the northern states.  Finally, there was the stubborn pride of those in the Southern slavery states versus the growing anti-slavery attitude of those living in the north, and that pride has continued through the 150 years, plus.

 

Just as the pamphlet “Common Sense” written by Thomas Paine had helped explain why there was eventually an American Revolution, Uncle Tom's Cabin was a Northern anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that also helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.

 

However, over these past months in New Orleans, we were able to witness many guns on display with strings of ammo strung across the bodies of those that were protecting the statues of those leaders of the Confederacy.  Fortunately, the activists that were determined to see the statues taken down, they limited themselves to only wearing flak jackets and riot gear.

Activist against the removal of rebel statues 

 

But even though it all started with non-violence demonstrations for keeping the statues in place, a contractor hired to remove one of the contested statues had to pull out of the job after an arsonist set his $200,000 Lambor­ghini on fire.

 

Even though the last statue has now been removed from New Orleans public property, the controversy is not over.

 

Conflicts over other Confederate monuments, memorabilia and merchandise are rising all across the country.  And it’s rising in areas as far from the South such as Massachusetts and Ohio. 

 

Questions about what to do with rebel symbols in public spaces and as to whether they should be barred or removed have become a major source of conflict. The Southern Poverty Law Center counts at least 60 Confederate symbols removed or renamed over the last two years since a young white supremacist murdered nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina, church.

 

Last week, a Boston-born, self-described white nationalist, Richard Spencer, led a nighttime gathering of white Americans clenching lit torches in front of the Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., a scene that city’s mayor recalled as reminiscent of the former activities of the Ku Klux Klan.

 

“What brings us together is that we are white, we are a people, we will not be replaced,” Spencer said at one of two rallies held near the monument, which the city plans to sell and remove.

 

Amid the familiar “hate or heritage” debate, some defenders say Confederate symbols have taken on a unique position. Some whites use them as political weapons wielded against a perceived decline in white dominance and the alleged tyranny of political correctness. (A utility that began after comments were made against “political correctness” by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.)

 

Carol Anderson, a black historian and professor of African American studies at Emory University, says that these various reasons given for defending Confederate monuments and symbols share a common underlying definition.  That being that even in an increasingly diverse democracy such as ours, some feel that power and influence should never change and should remain as is the status quo.

 

Karl Burkhalter, a retired racehorse trainer and self-described history buff from a small town near Baton Rouge, he personally kept a 24-hour vigil near New Orleans’s Jefferson Davis statue in the days leading up to its early-morning removal.  While keeping his vigil, the 61-year-old Burkhalter slept in his car. 

 

Three days before the Davis statue came down, James E. Miller, 85, an avid black photographer came to capture the statue.

 

“This is just an incredible portrait of hate,” said Miller, after he captured in a photo of a vigil of statue-keepers standing behind the police barricades with both Confederate and American flags. 

 

Miller, who now lives in the suburbs outside New Orleans, was raised in Birmingham, Ala., by his great-grandmother and her husband, both of whom were born as American slaves. 

The Rebel Battle flag still being used at a Southern cemetery

 

When Miller was a young man, he says he remembers the white men, angry about civil rights activism in Birmingham that blew up a church killing four black school girls.  Miller also saw the then Sheriff Bull Connor turn water hoses and police dogs on civil rights protesters, including the children.  Even with that long view of US history and politics, the conflicts in New Orleans, Charlottesville and other towns debating Confederate monuments, these are still mystifying to Mr. Miller. 

“Some days, I’m not able to understand how anyone alive can claim that the Confederacy was not a treasonous regime,” said Miller. “Those men on those monuments took up arms against other Americans so some rich white men could keep their slaves.”

 

For now, New Orleans will store the four Confederate monuments in an undisclosed location, due to threats made against city officials, activists, contractors and work crews involved in taking them down.  City officials announced late Thursday that an unspecified water feature will replace the Lee statue, and an American flag will fly where the Davis fixture once stood. Nonprofits and government agencies will eventually be allowed to submit plans that would put the statues on private property. City Park officials will decide what will replace the Confederate Gen. P.T.G. Beauregard statue.

 

Having been born in the South, I am very aware of all this this as I still have those relatives that have remained in the South and that also have the attitude that the South should have won the war.

 

I haven’t visited the South since I retired from the business that many times required that I visit the deep South.  And yes, I still have those disappointing memories of seeing all those vehicles while visiting in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama with their Confederate Battle Flag front license plates.

 

They were disappointing to see then, and would still be, if I were to see them today.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017