Neil Young has won’: Wal-Mart pulling Confederate flag merchandise (including Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs?)
Back in the days of youth, in early 1970, Neil Young sang a song called “Southern Man” on his new vinyl album , “After the Goldrush” which I bought. It was a song basically castigating the rednecks in the southern American states for their attachment to some dubious racist practices. This was still early days for Civil Rights, remember. Martin Luther King had been killed just months before , in April 1968.
Young’s song encapsulated, in a few lines, the perceived experiences of the black population in the south.
“Southern Man”{Neil Young}
Southern man
better keep your head
Don’t forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man
I saw cotton
and I saw black
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
Southern man
better keep your head
Don’t forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man
Lily Belle,
your hair is golden brown
I’ve seen your black man
comin’ round
Swear by God
I’m gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
It was n’t long before the South rose up and responded to this musical slight in the form of the band Lynyrd Skynrd’s “Sweet home Alabama”…..This was taken up as something of an anthem and a two-fingered salute to any interfering northerners butting in where they weren’t wanted :
“Sweet Home Alabama”
Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singing songs about the Southland
I miss Alabama once again
And I think its a sin, yes
Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you
In Birmingham they love the gov’ nor (boo, boo, boo)
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you
Here I come Alabama
Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers
And they’ve been known to pick a song or two
Lord they get me off so much
They pick me up when I’m feeling blue
Now how about you?
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies are so blue
Sweet Home Alabama
Lord, I’m coming home to you
Sweet home Alabama
Oh sweet home baby
Where the skies are so blue
And the guv’nor’s true
Sweet Home Alabama
Lordy
Lord, I’m coming home to you
Yea, yea Montgomery’s got the answer
The consensus for music fans was that they were both fine songs attempting in their own way to make a commentary on a very raw and changing situation.We all knew that Montgomery,Alabama had been at the heart of the Civil Rights action but it was also a fact that not everyone in the Southern States was a racist even though many hung on to some very strange notions of equality .They were the ugly faces grimacing and kicking young negroes or marching with their white hoods in the Ku Klux Klan.
Much has been written since those times about the separation of blacks and whites …the de-humanising restaurants and water fountains, schools and buses, but there was also obviously an undercurrent against this practice , mostly driven by rock and roll and blues music amongst the young, as referred to in the “MuscleShoals” reference where black and white musicians played together to make some of the greatest soul music of the times. Many began to see this music as an entirely new shared language .It was a language that was breaking down barriers right across the world.Change comes slowly , of course . I saw the Lynyrd Skynrd band a few times in concert before the original band was decimated in an aeroplane crash which left several of the members dead. At the time they performed on stage before a massive Confederate flag which they were obviously very proud of.
I have to confess that as music lovers most of us would not have been aware of the racist connotations in the flag or have given it much thought at the time.We had only a vague historical notion of the history of the American Civil War, mostly garnered from cowboy films and epics like “Gone With the Wind”. I dare say we saw the background flag as a bit of flashy stage decoration.Flags can be a bit like that too.We were there to see a fine rock band playing some good-time music. Since then the issue of flags has gained much more infamy.
Things change…times change …and that big wheel does turn slowly, but now the Confederate Flag and all its connotations have basically been banned in America. The imagery will probably fall from the mainstream and be sold in an underground fashion much like all the other tacky bits of symbolism that are sold in outside markets and car boot sales.
It’s a fact though that a lot of people have at last realised just how emotive and disturbing a simple piece of cloth can be .
There will always be someone offended by the flying of it, for whatever historical reason.
As for a commentary in verse on the Southern American experience , nobody captured it as well as Bob Dylan did in his song
“Blind Willie McTell”…
Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, “This land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem”
I traveled through East Texas
Where many martyrs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Well, I heard that hoot owl singing
As they were taking down the tents
The stars above the barren trees
Were his only audience
Them charcoal gypsy maidens
Can strut their feathers well
But nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
See the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
Hear that undertaker’s bell
Nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
There’s a woman by the river
With some fine young handsome man
He’s dressed up like a squire
Bootlegged whiskey in his hand
There’s a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Well, God is in His heaven
And we all want what’s His
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is
I’m gazing out the window
Of the St. James Hotel
And I know no one can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Rubbish, of course. But what can we expect???? People who call the Confederate flag racist don’t know their history. Did the South have slaves? Yes..Did the North have slaves, Yes as well!! Are there racists in the US..yes again. Are there racists in Ireland? You bet! Did the KKK and other foul groups use the Confederate flag for their own purposes? Yep. Did that make it racist? NO! A flag is NOT racist, people are racists!! The confederate flag is part of American history. Quit with the BS!!!
Good points, Laura. But I think a flag represents what most people feel it represents. Otherwise it’s just a piece of cloth, and few flags are that.
True dat, Jude, although most in the South do NOT consider it racist because it is their history and culture and that is how they see it. We have no way to stop those foul groups from stealing the flag for their own nefarious purposes. That’s what happens when people have freedom of expression. I don’t like it one bit, but I would defend to my death their right to use it. I just wish folks would educate themselves better about the history of the flag. I do NOT consider it racist as all of my family fought for the Confederacy and suffered severely from reconstruction and very, very few were actual slave owners and actually once they immigrated to Texas in 1840, none of them were slave owners. Non slave owners were the majority in the south but those who do not educate themselves think slave owners were the ones in the majority. That is simply not the case. Just want to remind you that the AA community is only 14% of the population in the USA today and was far, far less back in the 1800s, yet they seem to garner much more attention and rights than those of other races as a percentage and are extremely easy to rile up about things like flags, etc. Certain folks in the North of Ireland get incensed over republicanism, flags, (generally that of the ROI, right?) and can appreciate this. It is also true that Protestants/Loyalists see SF and republicanism with the flag as belonging to terrorists and the same with how the Republicans/Nationalists feel about the British fleeeeeeeeegggggg!!!! Yet I am beyond certain that the Brits don’t see their flag that way and never will. I too will never see the Confederate flag as racist mainly because I have taken the time to study the history of the South and its flag and know the history of my family. People, whether they like it or not, are going to HAVE to stop looking at what happened historically with the eyes of 2015. Pity they probably won’t.
Now that’s what I call an educational posting, Laura. We need to hear more from you. Maith thú – good for you!
I wonder what all the fuss is about Laura and Jude.
Why was that flag removed in Belfast last week?The one that some imbecile thought it was fine and dandy to fly outside a coloured man’s home.why was such an American flag flown in Belfast at all? Why would anyone think he might be offended by it and why did someone use it to deliberately offend?Let’s tease that one out .Is it a simple piece of cloth or a representation of a particular mindset, way of thinking or even an individual’s philosophy. Hasn’t the flag evolved into something other than its origin story?.
Is it not really a simplistic generalised totem to trumpet a particular ethos …just like a band’s T-Shirt says something about the fans that wear it. Why would “… the KKK and other foul groups use the Confederate flag for their own purposes? “….if it did not say something about the things they wanted articulated.
Someone must think there’s more to a flag than just a little colour juxtaposition and design sense…they make one hell of a fuss about them in Norneverland .As for slaves .At one time or another slavery was everywhere. In fact , you might say it was the normal state of affairs for some people who had spare cash to buy them with.Whole cities such as Liverpool were built on the back of the slave trade.Of course people across the world get very excited about flags .The American stars and stripes would have a very mixed appeal in various parts of the world these days …parts of North Africa spring to mind .Not everyone likes it at all because of what they feel it represents. The same can be said for the Union flag which is often referred to as “The Butcher’s Apron” in certain circles.It is by no means popular everywhere for some odd reasons to do with empire building and the like.
As for knowing their history .There are many out there who know nothing about their histories and at best only know a propagandist’s version of same.History being written by the winners and all that…and deliberately distorted to tell a particular story.
My friend, the flag didn’t ‘evolve’ the flag is what it is, representative of the Confederacy, an agrarian society depending on the work provided by what was, at the time, legal slaves. People look at the flag with 2015 eyes and see the cliff notes version of a distortion of history written by the winners of the War of Northern Aggression (the recent unpleasantness as my great grandmother called it) with its bias and voila! A racist flag representing a racist people which is simply untrue. Again, I am unable to help the fact that some eejit put the flag in front of the home of someone in Belfast. I’m in Texas and its a trifle difficult to control anything here much less in Belfast. I have met people who were in the KKK (truly frightening, I promise you), when I did a paper for college many years ago. And much tho I would love to change their views, it simply isn’t going to happen.
Besides, the only thing ‘Belfasty’ about me is I just bought the cutest babby house in Galveston and I am having a Belfast sink put in the kitchen!!!
Laura,
It is really irrelevant what proportion of the population of the former confederate states of America was made up of slave owners. The facts of the matter accepted by the vast majority of historians even those of the South is that the Civil war was fought over slavery.
The Confederacy lost the war! The battle flag of the Confederate Army of North Virginia was associated at that time with support for slavery. The Southern Cross represented oppression and discrimination for blacks living within the Confederacy.
It was used by the the KKK for that reason. I have no doubt that there are many honourable men and women who served the Confederate forces for reasons of National pride or local loyalty or reasons other than pro-slavery as there will have been people who fought for the Axis side in WW2 but the general rule applies their flags are no longer seen as acceptable to be officially flown.
Perhaps to you it is irrelevant, but to those who actually KNOW the facts and who live here in the South…not so much.
Not sure which historians you have read but it must have been the ones that have continually tried to re-write history and still do to this very day.
Yes, the South lost and believe me when I say we here in the South paid for it over and over and over again during the years following the war. I have family who lived during this period here in the South.
I mean, now these eejits are targeting Gone With the Wind…..really?????? But as we say here in Texas…ya can’t fix stupid. And by the way, the ‘Battle flag of the Confederate Army of North Virginia’ was associated with the Confederate Army of North Virginia..nothing more. Why a foul organization like the KKK used it, I couldn’t say and neither, I would suspect, can you.
Laura…. before you get the idea that I am somehow putting down the entire South, that is not the case . Not everyone was/is a racist.Let’s face it ,though , although folk and family memories reach back generations , this is , as you say 2015.It is not in any way the same place as it was some hundred years ago. It is not even remotely like 1968. What we are talking about now are perceptions….Modern perceptions. Personally , I couldn’t give a fig for any flag, but I can understand that you are now living in the United States of America and the Stars and Stripes is the American flag in this 21st Century.
The American Civil War was not simply about slavery but slavery was what drove the cotton economy. What did they call it …? “King Cotton”…In that sense it was cheaper to produce a crop when you worked men as stock rather than as paid labourers. This very fact dehumanised people. There’s no getting around that one in any era. Some slaves may have been treated well, no doubt , but these were essentially stolen human beings .Slavery still goes on in a variety of forms in the present time all over the world but it’s now mostly a hidden affair.Certainly the economics of cotton production was a huge issue and the Confederates believed that because of the European reliance on cotton, that they would find supportive bedfellows. In reality , no one outside America supported the Confederate States of America and it was not recognised by anyone else .There was no diplomatic recognition by any other country , so in effect the Confederates were fighting in isolation. In that scenario , with the fear of slavery expanding further into the northern states there was bound to be a conflict..
I’m sure that in the fullness of time you supported the Civil Rights movement for what it was…essentially an overdue redress of a social imbalance, still in place one hundred years after the end of the Civil War.Many in Ireland took their cue from that movement in the 1960’s .
Wars are bloody awful affairs and the fact that over half a million deaths occurred within the four year span of this one must have devastated many families ,and like Europe after the World War 2 ,must have left a population decimated ,with much displacement and rebuilding to do .There would also be some unavoidable bitterness.
I also understand that the Southerners were treated poorly by the Northern victors, but that is usually the end result in most wars.Ireland had its own Civil War and it has still left many people and families scarred.
As for the Confederate flag.What exactly is its function in the 21st Century ? That’s the question that many are simply asking. Like I said most people at this side of the pond will only have seen it in the cartoonish setting of the 1970’s TV series “Dukes of Hazzard”…on the roof of the General Lee charger, or as I said in the piece above , as a colourful graphic backdrop to a rock n roll band’s performance….or help us all…as part of the mad , racist regalia of the Ku Klux Klan….like I say ,we’re only asking…
Fascinating few posts on the flag known as the Ole Stars and Bars, Esteemed Blogmeister, and one which has always held a particular allure for Perkie’s inner country buff.
Indeed, inner country music buff – it is the Bars part which has handcuffed his interest. Or rather, earcuffed. That would be bars with a small b, the sort of music sung in honky tonk bars and made popular by the Stars of the Fifties and Sixties, when Country was in its prime time. And which not only caught Ireland’s ear, but held it. Delightfully so. Indeed, the island of Ireland, sans border.
And just as the flag is associated with the R-words – so also is the music most asscociated with the flag. R for Red-neck racism.
Of course, there is an element of truth in that, no denying, nosiree. But there is also a bigger picture which the peanut-brained folk who garrison, say, the broadcasting studios of the Free Southern Stateen don’t get, can’t get, won’t get.
Five years ago one found oneself hanging one’s stetson for a prolonged time in Athens. No, that Athens, but rather the Athens of the South, so called due to the Greek-revival design of its State Capitol. That would be Nashville, Tn., suh.
This day Perkie’s inner pedestrian decided to stroll from his motel to a nearby black neighbourhood to visit one of the most unusual tourist attractions of Music City, USA. Of course, one cannot walk very far in the States, any state or stateen, before being honked at.
Shoe leather is for Losers !
On this occasion, even as one paused to gawk across the Cumberland river at the name of a Bob Dylan album – Nashville Skyline – one was honked at with increasing frequency. For one was now in the black neighbourhood. Could this be the origin of the h-word, one wondered?
Haircuts have been linked with the original Athens these days. Again, it was a haircut of a different stripe which was associated with my destination that particular day.
It wasn’t too difficult to locate the barber’s shop which was indeed one’s d. – the name of the barber coincided with the name of the street. The latter having been named in his honor. Americans don’t believe till hanging on till a dude is dead before giving him his due.
It was a leafy suburb, though one which had gone somewhat to seed. Or, rather seeds, all of whom had now blossomed and were in full bloom. Seeds of magnolia, dogwood and azalea. Ah, the azalea.
And not the kind of barber’s shop one usually associates with,say, SweeneyTodd or even Perry Como. With a barber’s pole outside, with its helix of coloured stripes, red and white in the foremer case, red, white and blue in the latter. Instead, it was an ornery suburban Deep Southern House, with wooden steps and verandah, detached..
Inside, the barber, an old grey black gentleman called Vernon greeted one in his living room which he had converted into his workshop. There were already three clients there, each of whom was big, Jersey Joe Walcott big, and all seemed to be old army buddies of the barber. One of them was actually there to have his hair cut.
When I told OIe Vern I wasn’t there to have a short back or sides but rather to lap up the most musical accent in the entire U-nited States of A-meric-a the low-key barber replied, ‘Welcome to Music City’. While Jersey Joe Walcott the Second told me ‘mah Ahrish accent wuz jest wot da doc ordered’.
Naturally, Paddy’s inner plawmawsing Paddy was only too happy to ladle it on.
The barbershop was as much a studio and the barber a chat show host, and the topic turned quickly to a hot musical topic of the day – the sound and appearance of one, Susan Boyle. It turned out even that a busload of Scottish tourists had turned up at the barber’s shop the previous week, to have their Kodak moment ‘all took up’ with Vernon.
Moving swiftly on, one divined the information that Vernon the barber’s favourite music growing up in Mississippi was the hillbilliy music on the wireless..Not unlike, indeed, Ray Charles of Georgia (see below).
About three nights later, while channel hopping on the box in the corner of one’s plush motel room one chanced upon a televised ceremony from the Lincoln Centre. An annual event in which President Obama presented five distinguished personalities with a gong for their contribution to the arts.
To one’s surprise, as no mention had been made of the upcoming event during one’s thirty minutes eavesdropping in Vernon Winfrey’s barbershop, among the five was his daughter , the Big O.
Who is not called after the Grand Old Opry, by the way. But rather after Orpah, the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth. But then, the Grand Old Opera is a mispronunciation thing: just as Tom Dooley, he who was implored to hang down his head, was really Tom Doola. It being a characteristic of the Southern drawl to pronounce words ending in -a as -y. One need only to toon in to Miss Dolla Parton to get the full drift of that delightful that.
That night one fell asleep wondering was Vernon a sine qua non in Tennessee for the father of a famous personality. On one’s first visit to the state (1979) one had caught a glimpse of another Vernon as he was been limousined out of Gracelands on his way to visit his brother, the uncle of Elvis, on his deathbed.
There is a Vernon Avenue in Clontarf. Which made one query: was Brian Boru’s da called Vernon? Vernon Boru.
On another day in the Athens of the South, one journeyed out to the Nashville City Cemetery to visit the grave of the great Harlan Howard. One had the honour of spending an evening with him in Dublin, Ireland not Dublin, Texas in the mid-Nineties.
The Country Music Bigwigs were holding their Shindig on Liffeyside that year and after a State Reception in Dublin Castle a bus brought the BW’s down to the honky tonk known as Whelan’s of Wexico Street, oopes, Wexford Street.
To give the Visitors from Music City, USA a chance to check out the local songwriting talent.
There, Perkie’s inner plawmawser made sure to ply Ole Harlan with a pint or two of Guinness, in exchange for some groupie proximity with Greatness. To which OH replied:
-Ya know, sometimes ah think you Irish are jest OVAH friendly.
To which not innacurate observation Perkie was compelled to write out ‘plawmaws’ phonetically for him.
Harlan Howard is often called the Irving Berlin of Nashville, so prolific was he with the songwiting pen. It was he who formulated the oft-quoted line about country songs: ‘Three chords and the truth’.
Ray Charles (see above) had a hit with ‘Busted’ by HH, which might be described as ‘blue collar blues’ in a Southern Athenian style, come to think of it:
‘I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won’t lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day’.
Of course, Ray Charles who was no honky, for sho, recorded what is indubitably one of THE greatest country albums ever: take those chains from your brains, Lyric FM.
On asking Old Harlan which songs he was most proud of, Perkie got a reply which did not completely ambush him: ‘I fall to pieces’ by Patsy Cline and ‘I won’t forget you’ by Gentleman Jim Reeves.
Anyone with half a cloth ear will recognise what these two recordings are: art songs of a Schubertian sweep. Only musical snobs (see Lyric FM above) deny this: truly do these snobs deserve to be commorated as door knobs, a la Jacob Marley. To be knocked, and loudly knocked, from here to eternity.
One was surprised to find that Harlan Howard’s grave in is close proximity to that of General Zollecoffer, the first Confederate General to be killed in the Civil War. Turns out that HH had been a lifelong student of the Civil War and that this uber-civilised man had often expressed a wish to be buried close to his hero.
The General’s descendants were both honoured and happy to see that HH’s wish was granted.
One suspects that there is indeed more to the Confederate side than the simplistic one of red-neck racists handed down to us by the Winners.
Indeed, one cannot help thinking that the Greek-revival State Capitol of Nashville, Tn is not the only thing which Music City, USA has in common with the White Rose of Athens.
Dar be bully boys, in dem dar Northern Hills.
“Just want to remind you that the AA community is only 14% of the population in the USA today and was far, far less back in the 1800s, yet they seem to garner much more attention and rights than those of other races as a percentage and are extremely easy to rile up about things like flags”
Wow, Ms. Southern Lady’s quote says it all about her attitude toward her fellow citizens. Yeah, they do get riled up when 9 of their own get murdered in their own church don’t they? The unrelenting effort to paint the worst schism in the U.S. as a “war of Northern Aggression” on the poor ol’ South and to hold that ignoble flag high because it represents their so-called culture and heritage is total BS. Ms. Laura sounds so unionist/ulster scots-like and true many Scots-Irish settled in the south and their names carry on today across all races since slaves often took on the last name of their master – but what of their lost heritage eh? There is absolutely no way that one can look at the confederate flag and not see it for what it represented at the time: secession over slaves and currently: racism and the whitewashing of what was inflicted on millions of blacks in the U.S. and the worst total casualty rate of American soldiers ever.
The vice president of the confederacy Alexander Stephens, Jefferson Davis’s vice president, wrote in a speech that the South’s desire to preserve slavery was the cornerstone of its new government and “the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.” States rights? Sure thing – keep darkie in his place. Don’t cry on about those foul baddies such as the KKK usurping a noble symbol – it’s delusional. The confederate flag and the swastika have become emblematic for crimes against humanity. that is the heritage people who revere those symbols cling to.
last comment – the confederate government was more than ready to take assistance from England at the time to aid their cause. Another reason for condemning the confederacy in my opinion. it was a treasonous war and the confederate flag has no business being flown from any government building. the union jack is seen as a symbol of oppression to many in the north and true enough it is that – but I would have to admit until the day comes when the island of Ireland is again one nation both flags in the north have to be flown. Not so in the U.S. South – If you are a U.S. citizen then you should owe no allegiance nor hold any other flag in esteem but the stars and stripes. And yes, my great grand-father fought for the Union.
Sarah m. Wow….it is painfully obvious that someone in your line fought for the north which was easily as racist as the south ever was and if you look at a map of the most racist areas today in the US you will find that most of those areas are north of the MD line. The war was about states rights and you can say and wish and want whatever you please, you are wrong and are looking at history thru the eyes of 2015. I get it, really, I do!! You need to read a LOT more about Abe Lincoln’s real feelings regarding slavery and stop filling in the blanks with the small bit that you know.
Laura, we will agree to disagree – you are set in your ways about how you want to view a war that almost tore the US to shreds. – I know my history pretty well thank you very much and while I am always open to learning and changing my opinion, there is nothing in terms of information that you have provided or that I have read that merits a change of attitude about the confederate flag. While I never stated that racism was absent from states that fought for the Union that wasn’t my point. Racism by individuals is a hard thing to stamp out – but laws that are passed enslaving people is quite another and that is what the south wanted to maintain. Jim Crow was implemented to stifle voting by blacks in the south post Civil War – institutional laws to keep blacks from being able to exercise a right to vote. Whatever, my point is that it is 2015 and a negative symbol is what that flag has become. This morning I heard a remark on the radio by a South Carolina legislator after his House voted to remove the confederate flag finally from the state house grounds: we need to put the past behind us and start healing. it’s not an exact quote but the sentiment is that symbols keep alive images and old wounds they are powerful images and whatever you want to believe about the flag being only about your southern heritage, it’s just not the case now you have to take the bad along with it. It has been transcended to being the symbol of bigotry, prejudice and racism. if you want to wave it at your home go right ahead, but no one will really believe that you are doing it only because you want to honor your southern heritage and those poor souls who died fighting to maintain a way of life for the rich plantation owners.
I couldn’t have put it better myself sarah m..What the entire conversation and my piece above was about was what the imagery of the Confederate flag means now in 2015. I’m taking it as read that Laura is not a racist , for example, although she does seem to believe that the idea of equality is too much of a stretch when it concerns the black population. That idea that the Stars and Stripes is really the flag of the whole American nation in 2015, seems to still hang, undecided , in her personal air-space .
She constantly harks about the percentage of blacks in the population as though that was a valid point. The percentage enslaved is not and never was the point.That anyone was enslaved and segregated right up until the 1960’s… is the point..and how they were treated..and what they think represented that enslavement.. If your family can remember the Civil War of the 1860’s, it is surely no stretch for someone today remembering the lynchings and hangings of black people right up until the 1960’s .There is a cultural line stretching back. The idea of Civil Rights is always about equality for everyone . it has nothing to do with colour , class or creed ultimately.The wonder is that we even have to discuss any of this in 2015 .
It is a simple thing and there’s no getting around it. Much as many love the romantic symbolism of a long -lost sense of individuality that they might believe the Confederate flag endows , the fact is that for the rest of the world { and that would include whatever percentage of the black population in America you care to add} the Confederate Flag is seen as an ancient blighted totem , now .Yes , there are complicated reasons , social, historical and some simply based on human greed, why this war was fought…but that is the same for every war…Take a look at the background of the First World War for starters…It’s always complicated.It’s never just about the good guys and the bad guys.
In the end the Confederate Flag will be taken down for good and will probably be consigned to museums .As i write it is to be removed tomorrow from the South Carolina Statehouse, so someone, obviously a majority …. thinks that I’ve got it right on this one. That is what democracy is about .It may not make racists any less racist, but then , hopefully that particular strange grouping are only a tiny percentage of the population .Anyone with a working brain would like to think so.
No one died to keep the blacks slaves, they died to maintain states rights over federal government over-reach. Did that mean slavery was maintained in the South and in the North. Yes, it did. Lincoln didn’t want to involve himself in the politics of states which already had slavery, he was happy ignoring them. He just wanted to not add any more states to that confederacy. Fact is, only about 6% of all slaves imported from the Angolan area of Africa where the majority of slaves originated, came to the US because of tribal wars, where the winner got the slaves after winning a battle, kept the ones they wanted and sold the rest, mostly to the Dutch and well over 90 Percent of those went to the HUGE sugar and fruit plantations of Jamaica, the Caribbean and S. America which were owned by European colonialists having zero, zip, nada to do with the Southern US. You seem most determined to look at that time with your 2015 eyes and clearly refuse to see the truth of it.
I too am very much against slavery of all kinds. In fact, I have never owned a slave in my entire life! The South didn’t have the waves & waves of Irish, Jewish and Italian immigration that the North had to do its jobs such as the menial factory work, cobblers, tanners, etc. In the South there were only the slaves for the picking of cotton and those other jobs. But far, far more poor whites picked their own cotton than ever did any slaves, which were never more than maybe 500,000 throughout the entire US, because as you know, in the South, cotton was king and the agrarian nature of the South with its far better climate insured that those less wealthy in the South picked their own. We didn’t have the factories as in the North. We were the breadbasket of the US. So the slave trade was FAR worse outside the Southern US than it ever was here.
My grandmother and her mother both picked cotton and owned no slaves. And they were both descendants of the Washington family. Imagine that! Direct descendants of Warner Washington I (first cousin to Geo) picking cotton! But its a fact which I got in the stories told to me by my grandmother about her childhood memories and how hard picking cotton was.
The reason the Confederate flag has become such a powder keg is because of people like you who are descendants of the ones who wrote the history because they won the war.
This is why you will always be wrong believing as you do until you seek to find out the full facts of what happened in the South after the war. Not once in your post did you even mention Reconstruction and its affect on the South. Not even once.
P.S. Neither I nor anyone else in the South have any way to prevent the foul groups who have used the Confederate flag for their own nefarious purposes much tho I would love to be able to do so. Truth is, it breaks my heart to see the KKK and bully boys, like the UDA or that eejit who killed those people in the church recently, using the flag which so many in my family died to defend. But, then again, my family never had the opportunity to write their history of the war or of their experiences after the war which has allowed those horrible people to use the flag and convince others who have no real understanding of the meaning of the flag.. Its why my ancestors moved to Texas just in time to fight another war and why I am a 5th gen Texan.
I am curious tho, do you know a single thing about Reconstruction? If you don’t I highly recommend you do some study on it because by far what happened during that period is what caused the issue of racism to become so bad here in the South. Carpetbaggers and damn-Yankees.
So no, I will not agree to disagree with you because you have NOT looked at all the facts and until you do you will never be fully informed or even close to being historically correct.
very well said paddykool. if the son of Strom Thurmond can come out and say it is time to remove that flag, then the time is well past. I don’t think this was a cynical statement on his part but being the son of one of the major segregationist proponents who ran for President of the US with that as part of his platform definitely says something.
now, if we could only do something about “the Donald”! that guy is barking mad in my opinion yet he is polling #2 in some of the primary states – go figure
That’s about it sarah m. Much as I really enjoy Laura’s tales of family history and the trials of picking cotton for everyone, this story is not really about any of that .It is not about the practice of slavery that stretches back through every culture for thousands of years.Everyone traded slaves and captured them as part of inter -tribal wars. The Native American tribes took slaves…Wasn’t St Patrick supposed to have been a slave? Some have argued that he was in fact a slave trader , fleeing from the Roman Empire. Even today there are enslaved people working behind doors for the very rich in our capital cities.For some , slavery is and was a perfectly acceptable way to behave . For most of us , it isn’t .
In passing, “Gone With the Wind ” was mentioned . While being a rollicking good read about war, glamour and relationships before, during and after the Civil War, it is only a hasty sketch of a historical narrative.It eventually a very popular…very long , film. It should be remembered that the Scarlett O’Hara character was of Irish descent, given her very obvious surname… , whose father’s estate was farmed by slaves.It was seen as the “norm” in that context. Obviously , not everyone was rich and had large plantations and most people scraped by doing their own work and picking their own cotton.One of my favourite musicians , Levon Helm, spoke of picking cotton in the 1950’s as part of family life.His experience was also inter-racial .Many family stories also reflect that .
I wouldn’t want a book or a film banned because of a modern political correctness. I would prefer that it stood as a record of its time , but then books and films are personal private choices , to be enjoyed in an inner privacy, unlike symbolic flags which are flown outside in public places where they very obviously offend people.. There is a difference between the public and the private life after all. There is no one yet policing our inner thoughts.
well this has gone on about as long as I care to pursue it. Laura, glad you didn’t own any slaves – great job!!
Your insinuations that I know little about reconstruction is insulting because I don’t agree with your viewpoint of what the civil war was fought for. when the confederacy’s vice president spells out that slavery was a cornerstone well, I gotta give him a little credence. Did the south suffer unjustly during reconstruction? No argument there – did it fuel racism, well yes but it was already there anyway.and yes, it exists in the north but slavery wasn’t institutionalized and you can’t justify slavery because there was a lack of immigrants. That’s crazy.
Did southern states make up other ways to get around giving blacks full rights post-Civil War? Yep – so the lens of 2015 works pretty well. And yet, I know many southerners do not believe as you do, so it’s not just about me or anyone whose family fought for the union.
if your family suffered and it sounds like they did, that is a real shame. keep your views as you will but it doesn’t change the facts about what the flag of the confederacy now symbolizes. enough said on my part
I can only justify slavery in the South during that time because it was legal. I have always said I didn’t like the fact that it was legal, but had you or I or anyone else posting to this thread lived there, it a good chance they too, had they had the money, would have been slave owners. There is simply no way to know otherwise.