My Southern Heritage

My S O U T H E R N H E R I T A G E

Circa 1940s.

     My Dad had a shop for a year or two, during the '40s if I remember right but it could have been the '30s. He did plumbing and wiring. He'd hire black men to work with him, go around to the rural areas installing electrical wiring in both white and black homes. He told me of one house they were working on, a black family's home. The woman started cooking biscuits and ham about lunch time. He and the man he was working with started talking about how good it smelt. They were just about ready to go ask if they could have some but then it didn't smell as good as before. I guess the meat had gone bad.
     Dad worked with black men, hired them, ate with them, respected them as equals. That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1962.

     I was 13 then. Even as I began my teen years I was aware of the events happening during those late 50s and early 60s. There is a real sense of remembering that the flag went up that pole, almost a year after the anniversary of the beginning of the war. There is also a real sense of suspecting there were other motives and symbolism involved as well, though there would never have been offically recognized. Wrong motives and wrong symbolism. Recognizing right from wrong is my Southern Heritage. But I was a teen then, went on with being a student and in high school, and soon forgot about the flag up that pole

Circa 1966-67.

     I dont remember what the occassion was, but the class was up at the courthouse, seems like it was out on the front steps. I was standing around and looking around. There in the wall were the two water fountains, one marked colored, the other white. It just popped into mind and a bit of rebellious teenager popped out. I walked over to the one marked colored and drank, just for spite. That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1968-69.

     I was taking night courses at Greenville Tec then, as well as going to Clemson during the day. I was on my way back home from Tec this night, stopped at one of the lights on College St in front of the Greenville Library. It must have been late Spring, warm enough to have the window down. Another car pulls up and stops. I'm just sitting minding my own business, from the other car comes this unprovoked, uncalled for, "Hey whitey!" It's a couple of young black men trying to get some reaction out of me. I just ignore it, sit there wishing really hard the light would change, hoping they don't cruise along beside me trying more to get a rise out of me. After the light did change they went on about their business and I went on about mine. Nothing else happened.
     I really don't remember if they said much more, there may have been another phrase or two called out to me. I was the quiet, shy type, so I wouldn't have responded in kind to begin with. But I also knew it was both wrong and pointless to do that. I understood some had to vent their hatred of whites then. So I just sat there and took it, hopeing it wouldn't escalate into a physical attack. That's my Southern Heritage. In retrospect I suppose I could have called back, "Hey bro!" and tried to make it just a friendly encounter. But I didn't, I was never bold enough to venture a gambit, least something be misunderstood.
     That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1979-80.

     I was at the Red Diamond station at the corner of Ceder Rock and Pendleton in Pickens. Just had finished filling up the van and was going inside to pay. I got to the door right before an elderly, black man. I opened it and stood aside for him to go in first. He smiled, half laughed and motioned for me to go on in. I thought about telling him my Dad would still give me a whooping if he found out I didn't respect my elders. I could have insisted he go first. But I didn't, I just went on in. We try, we learn. That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1988.

From Journal entry: 12:35 pm, Monday Nov 28, 1988, St Thomas Island.
     *** What else would it be - Another "Yesterday"s Place. Such co-inc. Will this one close up before I get back. I missread the sign when I walked by went on across the main drag, sat on a flower bed wall, listen to the native talk, my schizoid paranoid sat in too, the natives hate the 'white man' too. That's what I sensed just a while ago and that's what I heard on top of the hill, "we taught them to plant vegetables." That's what the man said. ***
     "Hate the white man." That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1993.

     I did some genealogy work on my family lines, learned about the family history, relatives I never knew anything about.
     My great-granduncle, Jeremiah Hughes, was an Easley policeman, town marshal, during the 1890s. In June 1892, two black men got in a fight over a woman, one threatened to kill the other. The later one went and told Jeremiah about the incident. Jeremiah said he'd go talk to the other man and try to resolve the dispute. It must have been late evening because it was already dark. When he got to the man's house there was no one home so he sat on the front porch to wait. The man who did the threatening returned and saw someone on the porch, he thought it was the other black man. He gets his gun and shoots Jeremiah in the back, he's dead in just a few more minutes.
     Some individuals would use such an incident in their family history to hate another's race, that would be the wrong thing to do. I wouldn't and haven't. It was just another incident of a lawman doing his job, an innocent man getting killed over two other men's fight. That's my Southern Heritage.

Circa 1994-2000.

     In recent years, Summer of 1997 actually, I've come to realize a fundmental truth, a principle: "We all find exactly what we look for." Within that observation there is the subtle suggestion of "Choose wisely what you look for; take care and not look for something that's not really there."
     Look for racism and hate in a flag or symbol and you will find racism and hate. Look for freedom, honor, heritage in a flag or symbol and you will exactly those things.
     There is also the converse of the principle: "We all do *not* find exactly what we do *not* look for." Where one looks for the freedom, honor and heritage within a symbol, one does not find the oppression, dishonor and bad legacy within the same symbol. Where another looks for oppression, dishonor and bad legacy with a symbol, the other does not find the freedom, honor and heritage.
     It is indeed difficult to choose wisely what to look for and not look for.
     Pointing to one people's symbol of what they see as *good* and calling it *bad* is little different that pointing to a people's race and calling them inferior. Indeed, I believe it to be the worse of the two, the judgement is made on the subjectiveness of one's own interpretation of that symbol.
     And then they're those other flags and symbols that represent oppression, dishonor and a bad legacy. Not pointing to such and not calling them *bad* adds more injustices to that legacy. Turning a blind eye to what was done under their real sovereignty is as wrong as turning a blind eye to real racism and hate.
     I choose to look for "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," whether or not it leads to something good, bad or neither.
     I've looked back into my heritage and found slave owners and non-slave owners. I've found ancestors and relatives who fought for causes in which they believed, Civil Rights, Civil wars, Revolutionary wars. Being of European descendant I would probably find both oppessors and oppressed, serfs, peasants, indentured servants, religious perscutors and perscuted.
     I also look at a future legacy, that of generations a 140 years after us. They will inheirit one of ancestors who fought battles over meanings seen flags and symbols. Groups who judged each other by the emblems they wore and not their personal character. Groups who continuedly look for and found points of racism, hate, idealogical differences among themselves. Groups who use coercion, force, oppression to obtain their goals. Groups whose special interests focused only on their particular cause and not the whole of society.
     There are three symbols on a wall in the room.

     The crucifix comes from Christainity. It's history is as bloody and oppressive as most any other symbol of humankind. Yet there are many good teachings within it's theology as well. I am able to make a distinction between the two, I recognize what is good in Christainity as different from what is done in the name of Christainity.
     The plaque with Chinese characters is one I made. The thought comes from Confucian teachings, "The Master said, A man can enlarge the principles which he follows, those principles do not enlarge the man."
     Some twenty-five centuries ago in the Far East cradle of human thought, the master spoke words of wisdom which have seldom been surpassed. The utterance was aimed at those who thought better of themselves, and believed others thought the same, because they lived by principles. The master believed the reverse to be true, principles are good because people lived by them. Conversely, man can, and more offer does, decrease the principles by which the claims to live but doesn't. Principles, the master does not say good or bad though most scholars assume he meant honorable ones, are generally as flawed as the character of the practitioner. The lesson I learned here was to choose wisely good principles and live by them for the sake of the principle.
     The Confederate battle flag. It was put there in 1994 when the issue was in the news. Basically the teenage Rebel in me heard it was suppose to be a bad thing, the same said teenage Rebel who had forgotten about the flag up the pole down in Columbia for 35 years, thought "No it doesn't," happen to be in a local store that had them and so bought one of the so called forbidden fruit.
     Its origin was from a state of confusion just as its meaning is now in a state of confusion. Its predecessors' designs were too similiar to the Federal flag and Union Jack used on the battlefields. Its usefullness during the war lasted some 18 months. Its purpose was to provide identfication of one's own troops during the battles. It was posted in the camps along with the sovereign Confederate flag. It was what the soldiers saw during a bloody war.
     The principles they fought for, whatever they were to the individual soldier, were not in that battle flag or the sovereign flag. Those principles were within the minds of those soldiers, each one, individually. I have no more right to assign my understanding of the reasons and causes of that war to that flag than I do my perception of principles involved to the mind of the individuals who fought it.
     Whatever meaning a person sees in a flag, emblem, symbol that person alone puts the meaning there. I look at the Federal flag and see the decimation of Native American culture, fraud and corruption in government, politicians bickering along party lines. I can see wars fought for both right and wrong reasons, freedom to practice one's religion as well as the suspression of that freedom. I could just as easily see only the good things and ignore the bad things. I could make a distinction between what is the sovereignty of the Federal flag and what has been done in the name of that sovereignty.
     Now, there is still that Rebel flag, hanging on the wall. It's there for me to assign my own meaning to it. And that's much of what it means to me, a Rebel flag. Youth rebellion against the oppression of celebrations of life by the adults. Rebellion against being told what to do, when to do, how to do. Rebellion against what to believe, what not to believe, what to think, how to think. Rebellion against those who steal and ill use other's symbols. Rebellion against corruption, greed, racism, hate. Rebellion against bad politicans, bad policies, bad lobbists, bad journalism. Rebellion against leaving a bad legacy for future generations.
     Such has been my heritage: Southern, American, European. I accept it.