The Memory of the Confederate Flag

Eric Swanson

It is amazing to see that CNN must still report on issues of racism dating back to the Civil War.  One might think that since America has embarked on a new millennium, that old issues of bigotry, slavery, and prejudice would be out of mainstream society. However, CNN has reported on Jan 20, 2002 that South Carolina has symbols of the Civil War still proudly visible in their centers of government and commerce.[i]  The NAACP wants the confederate flag be removed from the state’s capitol complex.[ii]  This issue is again igniting a long historic debate over how the memory of the confederate flag should be viewed.

The American Civil War was a four-year war that ripped this country apart due in part to the issue of slavery and its affects it had on the welfare of the Northern and Southern States.  Many years before the southern states seceded from the Union there were many disagreements about the issue of how the future of the country would be ran and how it would develop.[iii]  The Northern States were developing into an industrial economy using free labor while the Southern States were still using slave labor for their mostly agriculture society.[iv]  During this time many changes were on the horizon and these changes caused many states and individuals to decide how they would embrace them.  The major change was how they viewed slave labor.  Those seceded from the Union believed whole-heartedly that their way of life needed to remain.  Many Southerners joined the fight under the Confederate Flag.  Just as the American Flag of today symbolizes all that America stands for, the Confederate Flag stood for the right of Southerners to have slave labor.  This flag helped motivate and invigorate soldiers to fight hard for their beliefs.  Under one banner they would fight for the existence of slavery.

Today, many supporters of the flag being flown on government grounds see the flag as a symbol of pride.  Helga Milsap, who was interviewed for an article in The Herald in South Carolina, said that when she is “Looking at it, she sees the embodiment of pride and bravery demonstrated by men like her father.”[v]  To Milsap the flag represents a soldierly virtue and the honorable service that her father gave to his country during a time of crisis.

However, though Milsap might remember the good qualities of war when viewing the flag, the reason it existed and the reason it even got into the state complex is one based on tragedy.  From the Civil War to the 1960’s the flag was never flown in South Carolina.  However, in 1967 Senator John D. Long is the man credited with getting the Confederate Flag put into so many prominent places of government in South Carolina.  He served in the Senate from 1955 – 1966 and during that time was an outspoken opponent to the efforts for Civil Rights.[vi]  In a 1960 speech to other Senators about the secession centennial, Senator Long said that the soldiers of the Confederates, Ku Klux Klan, and Wade Hampton were people that needed to be respected and honored and that the people of South Carolina needed to defend them from defamation from those individuals that wanted to label them as evil people.[vii]  He made sure to tell the other Senators to “dismiss from your consideration any little-sister sob stories about the South’s brutality to the slaves and its inhuman treatment of captive and fugitive slaves.”[viii]  In another action, Senator Long felt that the Supreme Court was unfit for duty since their decision on the Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation.[ix]  Finally, when Senator Long got the Confederate Flag to fly on the day of the Civil War Centennial the resolution read, “The battle flag of the Southern Confederacy inspires our dedication to the resurrection of truth with glorious and eternal vindication”.[x]  Senator Long was able to get the Confederate Flag to fly in government buildings as a way to defame those in politics that wanted to give Civil Rights to the African-Americans.  The Senator Long who provided South Carolina with its flying Confederate Flag was not a man of true American character, one who believes in the Constitution, its appointed leaders, and the values America stands for one of which is of “All Men are created Equal”.  Senator Long was a racist and wanted everyone to know that South Carolina still held true to the values that separated the Union in the first place.

On the other hand there are those who wish that the flag be taken down.  These people, like James McJunkin, also interviewed in the same Herald article with Milsap, see the Confederate Flag in a much different light.  “Slavery, lynching, segregation, humiliation: McJunkin sees them all when he looks upon the Confederate Flag.”[xi]  He also said that, “the state’s dark past should be taught and preserved, not celebrated.”[xii] McJunkin and many like him see the Confederate Flag flying at the State Capitol building as continuation of Senator Long’s commitment to remind people of their dark history.  However, reminiscing of that history is painful.  This pain is echoed in the banners that were raised during the many marches during this debate that read, “Your heritage is my slavery.”[xiii]

Since the Confederate Flag represented slavery and was put up on the state capitol building to rally segregationists in the 1960’s, why is it still there?  This flies in the face of over 30 years of trying to rebuild a unity in our country over this issue.  As Dana Cook, in attendance of the Martin Luther King Jr Day March on the Capitol of South Carolina, stated “That flag is tearing us apart…the Confederate Flag is dividing us from being a unified state.”[xiv]  Is a divided state what South Carolina wants?  Phyllis Bonanno, the president of Columbia College, told the congregation of marchers at the MLK March, “It is time for South Carolina to be seen not as divided and conflicted but as heroic in our commitment to unity, portrayed not as clinging to differences but as willing to make changes. It’s time for us to live the proud and passionate words or our Pledge of Allegiance, ‘One Nation, under God, indivisible.’”[xv]

South Carolina needs to take the Confederate Flag down from its Capitol Building Complex.  Let the Confederate flag fly proudly in museums, textbooks and the hearts and minds of those descendants who had ancestors who fought in that war, but not as a ever present reminder of a time that meant disunity for our country and hatred and dislike toward a whole race of people.  In this new millennium we as Americans need to throw off this old notion of racism and prejudice and the symbols that remind us of such a time.

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Date this page was last updated: 12/06/2002