In Michael Gaddy’s letter to the editor (Herald, March 20), he asks for “history, not politics” when discussing the American Civil War and the Confederate flag. Fine by me.
Historical fact: During the Civil War, obscured by the battle cry of states’ rights, the Confederacy’s vice president declared that the Confederacy’s cornerstone “rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
Historical fact: In the late 19th century through the early 20th century, armed militias of white supremacists in South Carolina and other southern states marched with the Confederate flag to threaten black Americans. Lynchings of black people prevailed under this banner.
Historical fact: The KKK and the Southern Dixiecrats resurrected the Confederate flag as their symbol of white supremacy during the 1948 presidential election, and it’s been waving ever since (including by Trump supporters today).
Historical fact: During the 1964 election, Alabama Gov. George Wallace campaigned as an Independent. Surrounded by Confederate flags, Wallace famously proclaimed “Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever.”
Gaddy states that “the war between the states was a complex issue.” Not really. Accepting that “states’ rights” was an ingenious rationalization, disguising the desperate desire of white Southerners to keep their valuable property (black human beings), and expansive plantations, it came down to this: Shall the United States of America continue to allow the enslavement of black people for the economic benefit of white people? The answer is not complex.
Well-known Southern historian Gordon Rhea writes: “It is no accident that Confederate symbols have been the mainstay of white supremacist organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan to the Skinheads. They picked the Confederate flag because it is the flag of a nation dedicated to their ideals: that the Negro is not equal to the white man. The Confederate flag, we are told, represents heritage, not hate. But why should we celebrate a heritage grounded in hate, a heritage whose self-avowed reason for existence was the exploitation and debasement of a sizable segment of its population?”
Mary Benson
Durango
