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CounterPunch
December
21, 2002
Same as It Ever
Was
South Carolina and It's Flag
by KEVIN ALEXANDER
GRAY
[In Commemoration of
Chester Trent Lott's self-abasement and Strom Thurmond's much-belated
retirement from the Senate, we here at CounterPunch deemed it
fitting to resurrection our friend Kevin Gray's devastatiing
essay from May of 2000 on the battle over South Carolina's confederate
flag and the state's monuments to slavery, segregation and its
defenders, military and political. By the way, Lott was named
Chester, after Chester, South Carolina, sacred ground for the
segregationist cause. Over to you Kevin...AC/JSC]
On July 2, 1776, the "anti-slavery clause"
was removed from the Declaration of Independence at the insistence
of Edward Rutledge, delegate from South Carolina. Rutledge threatened
that South Carolina would fight for King George against her sister
colonies. He asserted that he had "the ardent support of
proslavery elements in North Carolina and Georgia as well as
of certain northern merchants reluctant to condemn a shipping
trade largely in their own bloodstained hands." Fearful
of postponing the American Revolution, opponents of slavery,
who were in the clear majority, made a "compromise."
Thus, July 4, 1776, marks for African Americans not Independence
Day but the moment when their ancestors' enslavement became fixed
by law as well as custom in the new nation.
If only anti-slavery foes had said "no
compromise!" to South Carolina and rejected slavery and
white privilege, the United States would have begun as a principled
nation instead of a hypocritical one. Maybe then, today's South
Carolinians would not be at the point of violence about a flag
and what to do with it.
Throughout American history, South Carolinians
have led the fight to preserve and defend slavery, white supremacy,
racial segregation, and race fear. South Carolina is the soul
of the Confederacy. It is safe to say that South Carolina gave
birth to Dixie, so much so that it is a matter of pride to many
South Carolinians that their state was the first to secede from
the Union and that Citadel cadets fired the first shot of the
Civil War.
South Carolina's singular role in United
States history is as a conduit for the growth of slavery. Between
1700 and 1775, forty percent of all enslaved blacks came to America
through the state. As Ellis Island in New York was the first
stop for many Europeans willingly entering the New World, Sullivan's
Island near Charleston, was the first stop for many Africans
who were brought here against their will. South Carolina had
the highest percentage of slaveholders in the nation. In 1860
almost half (45.8 percent) of all white families in South Carolina
held enslaved Africans.
The Confederate flag represents the
glorification of that history. The flag represents slavery, racial
oppression and a deep-seated belief in the very existence and
rightness of the Confederacy. The flag symbolizes a privileged,
landed class, white supremacy and patriarchy. Those who fought
and died under the Confederate flag were willing to die for the
expansion of slavery. This, not some vision of mint juleps and
ladies in ringlets and lace, is the "heritage" that
modern Confederates defend when they champion this flag. For
most Americans, let alone most African Americans, the men who
died under the Confederate battle flag were not heroes; they
were traitors to the fundamental notion of human freedom.
For the past 32 years, the Confederate
flag has flown atop South Carolina's Statehouse dome. Now there
is finally a movement to move the flag to the grounds around
the Statehouse. Many in the white community believe this is a
compromise blacks ought to jump on. Some have even offered that
the flag be cast in bronze as possible compromise. A few white
state legislators promise violence if the flag is not honored
"appropriately" and as part of the "compromise,"
black legislators must agree to leave all Confederate monuments,
building, school, street names and the like in place.
In spite of such threats, the local,
national and international community must repudiate this compromise.
It is unacceptable to have the Confederate flag flying on public
property. The flag is a racist, ignoble symbol and location does
not change its meaning. The flag as government-imposed speech
or symbolism is a slap in the face to all Americans who believe
in equality. The NAACP's demand is that the flag be removed from
the dome and relegated to a museum. So, if the South Carolina
legislature decides to cast the flag in bronze, the group will
have accomplished its mission. That does not mean that the remaining
monuments to racism ought to be left alone. All monuments that
glorify slavery ought to crumble, and it is outrageous and not
just symbolic that the most reactionary legislators are insisting
that all other symbols of white supremacy and enslavement must
stand if they give up this one.
The National Association for the Advancement
for Colored People remains the spearhead of the economic boycott
against South Carolina. Although the boycott sometimes lacks
coherence, the group loses credibility amongst its core supporters
by accepting any deal that leaves the flag flying. The boycott
generally centers on tourism but, at present, it is difficult
to measure the effect on white-owned businesses or activities
such as concerts or sports events. Some in the movie industry
such as Will Smith and Mel Gibson ignored the call to avoid the
state while tennis pros Serena and Venus Williams refused to
play at the all-but-segregated Hilton Head. The Neville Brothers
appeared in the state while singer Gerald Levert says he won't
perform until the flag comes down.
A few months ago, the New York Knicks
moved their training camp from Charleston. Players said they
"didn't feel welcome" with the flag flying. If the
NAACP expands the boycott, it should include discouraging athletes,
black and white, from playing major college sports in the state.
The NCAA has indicated that it is willing to go along.
The boycott has had an immediately adverse
affect on blacks. Many black families come into the state for
reunions. Hotel owners whose client base is predominately black
feel the immediate pain of the tourist boycott. If the boycott
dramatically affects convention business, that hurts black workers
disproportionately. In spite of this economic reality, moving
the flag to the front door of the Statehouse ends nothing--would
the civil war have ended if slavery had been moved to some more
obscure corner of the nation?--and most black people in South
Carolina are willing to sacrifice a bit longer. They see the
flag as symbolic of the economic disparities and regressive racial
attitudes that have persist in the state to this day.
The South Carolina business community,
black and white, wants the flag down because the boycott and
accompanying negative publicity is costing them money. Yet, many
white businessmen express an inbred sympathy for flag supporters.
Many in the chamber of commerce crowd think that moving the flag
to the state's Main Street will change the image of the state.
They are counting on the rest of the world seeing it their way.
They are just as out of touch with how South Carolina appears
to the rest of the world as their predecessors who put the flag
up as a symbol of resistance to civil rights for African Americans
in 1968.
Many white legislators have openly expressed
their longing for, denial of or amnesia about South Carolina's
racist history. Some have mused out loud about how good it was
when all black football teams played the all-white teams. Almost
all ignore past and present Ku Klux Klan activism and violence
in the state. One calls the NAACP, the 'national association
of retarded people.'' Others unashamedly proclaim that black
slavery "is good." Confederacy defenders and those
nostalgic for state-sponsored segregation, present to the world
the same troubling mindset as Austria's Nazi SS defenders. The
international community should respond to South Carolina as it
did to Joerg Haider's Freedom Movement and his Freedom Party-led
government.
The South Carolina statehouse is surrounded
by Confederate monuments. Not only that. There are Confederate
monuments at every county courthouse and town square in the state.
The names of white, male southern patriarchs are everywhere.
Towering high in Charleston is a statute of John Caldwell Calhoun
who promoted the ideology of white supremacy and states' rights.
General Wade Hampton who promoted and defended secession and
the Confederacy sits on a horse on the capital grounds. Benjamin
Ryan Tillman, a virulent white supremacist, constitutionally
(and otherwise) who reinstituted white rule after Reconstruction,
faces the Confederate soldier statue that guards the statehouse.
"Pitchfork" Ben drove blacks
out of the state at gunpoint. He and his Sweetwater Sabre Club
members wore white shirts stained in red to represent the blood
of black men. Tillman's heir, Senator James Strom Thurmond, rose
to prominence in 1948 with the States Rights Democratic Party,
better known as the Dixiecrats. Thurmond ran as that party's
presidential candidate; his party stood for segregation and against
race mixing. Throughout his congressional, career Thurmond has
opposed every major civil rights initiative. On the statehouse
grounds, Thurmond's statute faces the Confederate Women's monument.
And long before Nazi Germany's Josef
Mengele, the "Angel of Death," conducted human experiments
on Jews at Birkenau and Auschwitz; long before the Tuskeegee
experiment that left 399 black men untreated for syphilis from
1932 to 1972, South Carolina had James Marion Sims. Sims, the
"father of gynecology," established America's first
women's hospital -- the Women's Hospital of the State of New
York. He is also credited with founding the Cancer Hospital now
known as the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Yet before Sims treated
the white and wealthy, he experimented on enslaved black women.
Sims performed more than forty experimental operations on an
enslaved woman named Anarcha for a prolapsed uterus without anesthesia
or antiseptic. Sims' memorial is tucked in a corner of the statehouse
grounds next to the Robert E. Lee Memorial Highway plaque.
All these men hold a place of honor in
the hearts and minds of many white South Carolinians. If they
need to prove that they have not abandoned their racist heritage,
there will remain plenty of evidence after the Confederate flag
comes down. And ensuring that those relics of racism and white
supremacy will remain in place for another generation is far
too high a price to pay in order to achieve the minor feat of
allowing the flag to further defile the statehouse grounds.
While the Statehouse lawn is crowded
with statutes of white men the memory of the rebellious black
haunts modern Confederates. The Citadel, the state-run military
academy in Charleston that was recently forced to accept women,
was built in 1825 after the Denmark Vesey insurrection of 1822.
Construction of the Citadel arsenal was begun in order to protect
whites from "an enemy in the bosom of the state."
In 1999, a majority-white committee was
given the task of coming up with a memorial for the Statehouse
grounds that would recognize the legacy of slavery. Vesey's name
was suggested to the committee. The Vesey conspiracy was one
of the most elaborate black uprisings on record. It involved
thousands of blacks in and around Charleston. In the end Vesey,
his five aides and thirty-seven blacks were hanged for trying
to set themselves and their brethren free. Vesey didn't just
shout "give me liberty or give me death," he acted
on that idea, so fundamental to American concepts of liberty
and values. Nevertheless, the committee refused to recommend
a statute of Vesey because "he advocated killing whites."
But the committee did not suggest taking down the statues of
Tillman and Hampton, who advocated killing blacks.
Many white southerners refuse to believe
or accept the fact that his or her ancestors fought the wrong
fight. You hear the same nonsense over and over: They "fought
bravely," "defended the land," their cause was
"noble"-even that they fought because they were called
and "it was their duty to fight" Illusions aside, the
war was about "keeping the niggers in place!" Poor
whites fought and died in a "rich man's war" because
they wanted to remain "better than the niggers." And
today, if the flag remains on the dome or even if it is placed
on the grounds, the underlying sentiment that welcomes its continued
presence will be "keeping the niggers from getting what
they want!"
For those with an unbiased and honest
view of history, that flag will always represent racial oppression,
first and foremost. Flag opponents are not asking anyone to forget
history or to give up their flag. Just the opposite: We must
never forget! Those who put one of the many Confederate flags
on their cars or fly them in their yards at least do us the favor
of letting us know what they stand for. Still, at some point,
there must be a repudiation of the symbols and icons that glorify
the immorality of the past.
People have to get beyond that point
if we expect them to recognize the debt owed African Americans
for the stolen lives and labor of their ancestors. And that is
the least we ought to expect.
Kevin Gray
is a CounterPunch contributer and civil rights organizer who
resides in Columbia, South Carolina. He can be reached at: kagamba@bellsouth.net
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