Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems. Is it their feelings? The Isonhoods were the first stop of my May 2018 listening tour of Mississippi with photographer Kate Medley to ask flag supporters in our home state why they still support a symbol that represents so much pain, division and difficult history even as they urge black Americans to get over their resistance to it. I met Be after reporting that her grandfather, Pastor Clyde Briggs, was a target of the Klan in the 1960s for trying to organize and arm black people against white supremacy. Look at whats happening to our statues! he says. Fascism is not asimple machine with an on-and-off switch. The dead person is a suspect before they are a man, woman or child. By the time Mississippi embedded it into its new state flag in. The Christian flag? she asks. The two single mothers finish each others sentences, laughing about that time Hentz went into labor where they worked and Massey put her in an office chair to wheel her downstairs to go to the hospital. Politically correct groups seized that opportunity to make it seem like that flag came down that pole, walked down into that church and killed those people, he says. But black newspapers didn't buy it: "Have we so soon forgot what the Confederate flag represents?" Robert E. Lees armies took special care to enslave free blacks during their Northern campaign. He is right, but only to a point. But Lee claimed the assassination of the Great Emancipator was deplorable. Jefferson Davis believed that it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South, and angrily denied rumors that he had greeted the news with exultation. Lindy, now 66, has shifted her stance on the death penalty. The Confederate flag began enjoying unprecedented national popularity and became a cultural symbol after World War II, just as the federal government began trying to make good on its Reconstruction-era civil rights promises. "In the first phase, tension builds and a . Were on Highway 49 south when it pops up: Flag Heads, which sells adult novelties and Confederate tchotchkes. Come on over! Joe Barnes booms, describing his nearby Seminary home as the one with the US, Confederate and Mississippi flags out front, after I tell him Roslyn sent us. A photo soon emerged of him holding a Confederate flag. The room is a shrine to the Confederacy with a rebel-flag-themed cushion, curtains and even a mousepad. I am going to start researching this, she adds about the history as Kate calls for her. Our disgust for the dastardly wretch can scarcely be uttered, fumed a former governor of South Carolina, the state where secession began. All Rights Reserved. In September,. When Southern states gave the flags pride of place in their capitols, it was to signal support for segregation. "Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. Nikki Haley said Monday that it was time South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol grounds, in the aftermath of a shooting that killednine people at a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Surely the flags defenders will proffer other, muddier, interpretations which allow them the luxury of looking away. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2023 The Havok Journal. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. It flew for all colors, black, white, whatever, she says. Once such a process has begun, and those forces are unleashed, it is not easy to stop. We are stopping by homes with flags, but owners keep pointing us on down the road to him. For 75 years, it was used as a reminder of the nobility of that cause. Until they do, the violence of the right is only going to keep swelling and crashing. She is the author of the recent book "Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy.". Signs set the tone at the Embrace help centers and shelter for victims of domestic and sexual violence in rural Wisconsin. Her sister would exchange clothes with a black friend, she says. https://t.co/TVeEIOFoo1 pic.twitter.com/zuOU7HJ87S. According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates. Abandon this charlatanism. Today, the symbol often appears at pro-white rallies and is a lightning rod in Americas calcifying racial divides. Numerous opportunities to simultaneously protect patients and the planet, say experts. To this point, theDemocratic Party and the political and news media classin general have remained in denial, and largely passive in response. This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. Still, Ira flies the flag, which his own high school and college used as an emblem. The writer Patrick Wyman has hypothesized that the flagrancy of police violence against protesters is part of a strategy of exemplary violence, akin to the outsize and grotesque revenges inflicted on participants in medieval peasants rebellions. Shes struggled. The Klan is different from us. Black American flags are the flags that mean "no quarter shall be given." Larry McCluney Jrs home office. Thelethal attack on the Capitol hadbeenpublicly announced weeks in advance, and should have come as no surprise. Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. Embrace equity. [My father] was prejudiced, Ira says. McCluney, 53, is a national officer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which accepts male descendants of southern soldiers. Knowing that Lindy now talks to other Mississippians after rethinking the death penalty, I feel a twinge of hope as I watch Iras rebel flag flying outside the window of Deer Hollow. However you interpret these videos posted byTrump followers and otherneofascists which couldbe mainly performative it is clearly true that the Americanright isincreasingly willing to accept or condoneviolence as a means of expanding and protecting their social and political power. He did not violate some implicit rule of Confederate chivalry or politesse. Alabama Governor George Wallace who promised to fight for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" began flying the Confederate flag when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy came to Alabama in 1963 to discuss integrating the state's universities. When I had interviewed her about being in a white gang, I saw her defending the flag on Facebook. They're angry. Move forward. Cowardice, too, is heritage. The same Georgia state legislature that considered closing the state's schools rather than integrating them also changed the state flag to include the Confederate symbol. But that reverence now stops at the capitol grounds. You feel I boast of impossibilities due to ego and arrogance. Embrace violence. Its a piece of our heritage that should be left there to honor sacrifices, Davis says in a cozy parlor, adding that most soldiers were dirt-poor farmers with no slaves. After the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, white Southerners used the Confederate flag to intimidate civil rights activists and demonstrate states' willingness to protect segregation at all costs. When I graduated from high school, we didnt have an indoor toilet.. Anything less, and the disease of American fascism will only go dormant until it is resurrected again perhaps in amore dangerous and virulent form. Johnson would not censor individual ownership or display of Confederate regalia but also not continue official approval to historic symbols of racial violence and oppression. Curfews were imposed. Most of em dont know what it means, she says. Yet the Confederate battle flagthe flag of Dylann Roofstill flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia. Petite Roslyn Stuart is behind the counter with a swagger like she has seen it all more than once. Save your lovely souls. Cries for forgiveness and moans of helplessness will fill their dwellings. White mobs at the University of Alabama carried Confederate flags when they threw rocks at Autherine Lucy, the university's first black student, before the university decided to expel her rather than protect her. Similarly, alarge proportion of Republicans believe that the rioters who stormed the CapitolonJan. 6 were "patriots" whose use of violence was justified. All Ive heard is a downplaying and whitewashing of history in an attempt to gaslight its population.. Gentlemanly Kevin Davis is surprised when we show up at his large white antebellum-style house in Simpson County. His own ancestors sacrifice is paramount. In the end, of course, Chauvin was found guilty on all three of his charges. "We are not the worlds police;" "The standards of conduct are different in the Middle, This is an excerpt from Violence of Action: The Untold Stories of the 75th Ranger. Nikki Haley spoke of unity. Barnes, 66, beams as he hands us his SCV card with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the wealthy Memphis slave trader and first KKK grand wizard, pictured on the front. From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar.". The friends reject being offended over what Hentz calls just a piece of cloth. A little more than a week before the jury delivered its verdict in the trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, and about 10 miles from the Hennepin County Government Center where Chauvin sat on trial, 20-year-old Daunte Wright was fatally shot by an officer during a traffic stop. One mans prison sentence for a murder seen by millions on camera is a long way from the transformation we need. Why are these minorities pushing to do away with this flag? Potter was the president of the local police union . Heres the data on Minneapolis police use of force per week since 2017. Few filmmakers can resist the thrill of the rocket's red glare and the spectacle of death; the violence is simply too exciting. They are protected by "law enforcement officers bill of rights" laws in more than a dozen states, which cushion them from the legal fallout of felonies and abuses; by the egregious doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields them from lawsuits against constitutional rights violations; by unions that embrace without qualification the worst offenders in police forces and exercise considerable power over municipal governments with both flush finances and the implicit threat of a heavily armed and punitive membership. "The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag, Haley said. Trump's rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's"enemies.". 100% Cotton. Other official flags were also displayed during the Nazi regime. But for Donald Trump himself,and most of hispolitical cult, that rule does not apply. (Today, its supporters say the KKK co-opted it.). The very nomination of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, four years ago, spoke plainly, warwar upon Southern rights and institutions . What has Mississippi done to say that it is sorry for the rape, torturing and killings of scores of its black citizens in order to create a white majority? Be says. However, to a very select few, its much much more. Youre not bad with money. And luckily for all of the others, it is! In the aftermath of a shooting apparently motivated by white supremacy, even as South Carolina's state flag and the American flag were lowered to half-staff, the Confederate flag continued to fly. His solution? It's alarming because there is probably an equal number of guys on there talking about the civil war plans and actively using Tik Tok to recruit these military and ex-military members. In the early 1950s, stock car racers, Southern universities, and social groups embraced the Confederate flag, Coski wrote in his book. Black South Carolinians have been asking for the flag's removal since 1972, and it's been a formal demand of the legislature's Black Caucus since 1977. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. The police kill a man or a woman; or a teenage girl, in the case of 16-year-old MaKhia Bryant, who was fatally shot by an officer near her home in Columbus, Ohio, shortly before the Chauvin verdict was delivered; or a child, as in the case of 13-year-old Adam Toledo, shot with his hands up in Chicago last month. McCluney teaches his black students his Confederate history. Dont ask if you dont want to know. But, he adds, they know me as a teacher who cares about them. And from the moment the design of its best-known flag was proposed, some Southerners began imbuing it with the symbolism of their cause. That's certainlytrue for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen,and other followers. You think I speak lies and elaborations. The phrase the thin blue line is older, perhaps first popularized in 1922 by New York City police Commissioner Richard Enright, who used the phrase to describe police as that intensive battle line, the first line of defense against criminality., By the 1980s, the phrase had gone fully mainstream, propped up by a symbiotic relationship between increasingly powerful urban police departments and sympathetic media; in Errol Morris 1988 film of the same name, a judge told the camera that police were the thin blue line that separates the public from anarchy.. Bryan Myers, the same author who brought you An Open Letter to the Political Leadership of America, a hard-hitting evisceration of the fecklessness of our political leaders that went viral in recent weeks, now tells us what should be done about it. Its a symbol of our state; its who we are., She continues: Northern people were down here trying to burn all our stuff true; the Yankees torched Jackson three times and we were trying to stop them They didnt think it was right we had slaves. Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, says he wishes poor whites would recognize how powerful politicians have long played racial politics with Confederate emblems a deliberate strategy to divide them from people with shared economic interests. The infamous tree, used for lynching, was bending over a bridge on Highway 433 toward Lexington. Villain though he was, Booth was a man who understood the logical conclusion of Confederate rhetoric: Right or wrong. The Confederate flag was adopted to represent a short-lived rebellion to extend and protect white supremacy and black slavery. It was removed after some legislators felt it could be, "interpreted as anti . A Mississippi flag seen on the side of the road in Simpson County, Mississippi. Nonetheless, the police continue to operate under layers of legal impunity and institutional protection that vastly overshadow the rights of the citizens they brutalize, murder or assault. "The Confederate flag stands for slavery and human degradation. And make no mistake: the GOP has become the party of political violence. Although showing guns on Tik Tok is supposed to be against community guidelines, they show lots of videos of their guns, shooting them, wearing them, or sitting on their bed. While it includes the saltire, or Southern Cross, it never included the full battle flag. This group understands that not all people can be negotiated with and at then end of the day, human nature is primal. But while white Southern women were draping the flags on the gravestones of the fallen in the early years of Reconstruction, Coski writes, an armed militia of white supremacists in South Carolina was marching with the Confederate battle flag to threaten black residents. She wonders why the flag is once again becoming a big deal. Theyre not afraid of being filmed, because being filmed simply reinforces the central theme: If you come to protest, an action that explicitly challenges the order and my place in it, this is the consequence. I later share those words with Derrick Johnson, the national president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who previously led the Mississippi chapter. A minute number of people ever stop to think about the circumstances that surround the very freedoms they spend the majority of their lives enjoying. Shes helped me. In actuality, it is better than a gold standard, because violence has universal value. A listening tour in Mississippi asks flag supporters why they still support a symbol that represents pain, division and difficult history. Hentz, 41, is from Missouri, once a violent slave state, but calls the flag just an inanimate object, adding: Stop letting it control you.. from the Confederacy's vice president that declared 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"). Gretchen Whitmer called for in her State of the State address Wednesday include what is commonly known as a "red flag" law, providing for "extreme risk . The blue line is both a border and an elevation, hanging above the threat that needs to be eliminated. Cowardice, too, is heritage. "In no way does he reflect the people in our state who respect, and in many ways, revere it.". Their beliefs will be turned upside down as entire units are brought down without mercy as if God himself smite them. A Confederate flag at an anti-integration rally in Little Rock in 1959. It's our duty to stand up, Let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country. (Salon did not find licensed news photographs of these flags, and has made the editorial decision not to reproduce the images mentioned above, which are easy to find on social media.). Sitting there, they see clearly what those who reject violence are blind to, that the evil they face is real and it is most definitely coming. Then it became a symbol of resistance to black civil rights leaders and to the federal government that was finally trying to enforce the law of the land. In his attic, McCluney downplays slavery ownership saying elite planters, not soldiers, owned most slaves. Even as the institution had shrunk outside the south for a century, its riches continued to drive the US economy, including Wall Street and early capitalism, up to the 1860s. But many of their households owned at least one, or they aspired to ascend to slave ownership. The American Flag is positioned on the left, slightly higher than the Thin Blue Line flag. Directed by Clint Eastwood; written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis, based on the book by James Bradley with Ron Powers; director of photography, Tom Stern; edited by Joel Cox; music by Mr.. Both Rousseau, as the Texas leader, and Dillon Hopper (aka Dillon Irizarry), as the group's . In the interest of reuniting white Americans, the narrative around the Civil War changed in its aftermath. Chauncey can be followed onTwitterandFacebook. As the practice waned up north, white men rushed to the south, bringing slaves. Many defected to segregated union camps. How much more do we need to do?. In this way they honor their ancestors. It still holds true today. Davis no relation to Jeff has taught history in public and private schools, and also turned out to be an SCV member. Southern politicians displayed the Confederate battle flag when they railed against Truman. He wrote the chancellor that he would never buy another ticket after the game ban of the rebel flag. They would speak of us as ghosts and servants of a God they now fear. Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. In April 2001, Mississippians voted along race lines to keep the flag as it was. The streets were filled with the opaque greenish mist of chemical weaponry, hanging in stinging clouds that made residents in neighboring apartments cough. The flag that Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, does not stand in opposition to this actit endorses it. Embrace Violence Two simple words, that when together, build the foundation for all that we know. Covid vaccinations, mostly. It was 1957 when little Lindy Lubys great-uncle showed up at her house near Benton, Mississippi, where the family had lived for generations. Talia Lavinis a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Village Voice, The New Republic and many more publications. The Confederate flag played a big, big part in our history, Ira says. Dont ever allow your wife to sign Mrs again! he warned. The flag, which has gone on to earn its creators company, Thin Blue Line USA, a healthy living selling related merchandise, literalizes this vision: a U.S. flag in a stark photonegative scheme, save for a broad line of blue. Then they tell people to message them or where to find them on Telegram. And, as McCluney points out, New York-financed slave ships kept sailing to West Africa for people to be sold in the Caribbean and South America. To me, the flag is not a racist thing. In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-blackAmerican flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated peopleand others deemed to be "enemies" of"real America." The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed. The treatment is removal of exposure. The LAPD was left to rack up overtime in an abundance of caution. The NYPD tailed protesters fruitlessly across bridges and through parks. That use of the flag is the crux of the "heritage, not hate" argument: that the Confederate flag is simply about honoring the South's past, its dead, and its culture. Lindy and Ira Isonhood walk along Deer Hollow, their property in Copiah County, Mississippi. Be, who discusses the flag respectfully with friends who like it, challenges Massey, Hentz and others to probe deeper. SALON is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. History teaches us that if we dont, someone else will. Violence is Golden by Jack Donovan, Most will see the above admonition and others like it and automatically relate it to the malevolence of those who wish to do nothing more than tear this world apart. I try to be sensitive. Just a point of history Prior to Roofs massacre, the South Carolina NAACP had waged a 15-year boycott against the state for its [Confederate] flag display, Johnson says. She worries that young people now think the flag stands for the KKK. When it was taken down from the Capitol dome, some flag supporters chanted, "Off the dome and in your face.". The Thin Blue Line flag dates back only to 2014. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. So, I say to you again, simply I would bring fear and death to them all!. When the April 11 death of Wright prompted renewed civilian protests in Minneapolis, police gathered as they have gathered so many times this year, as they had in response to Floyds murder nearly a year ago in tight formation, in full riot gear with shields and batons and service weapons, ready to repel an invading army. Demands for change in American policing have outstripped the 2010s ethos of reform, which for years involved providing more and more resources to bloated police departments: for training that has proved ineffective, body cameras that can and do serve as aids in crafting meretricious narratives, for consent decrees in cities with particularly egregious police regimes that wind up protecting departments more than curbing their atrocities. That was horrific to my organization (SCV) when that took place.. It is a way of life. To many white people in the south and beyond, the Confederate flag is a sign of historic pride and defiance to whatever is currently called liberalism; to most black Americans, the flag stands for white supremacy and racial violence. She equally acknowledged the pain and the pride that the.
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