From a son of the South: Fold the Confederate battle flag

[struggle4progress]

BY STEPHEN T. SMITH

I am a white son of the American South who accepts the reality that the Civil War was fought mainly in defense of slavery, that it is revisionism at best to contend otherwise and that the Confederate Battle Flag now represents the worst of our racist heritage ... I am descended from Confederate soldiers on both my father’s and my mother’s sides of the family. My mother was briefly a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy until she became disillusioned and resigned ... My Confederate ancestors might have been men of “valor and devotion” ... But they were wrong. They fought for the wrong cause. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now ... Whatever the Confederate battle flag might have meant in 1865, at least since the 1960s and the advent of the civil rights era it has become a symbol of white supremacy, segregation, racism and bigotry. It has no proper place in our society today ... If I want to honor the graves of my ancestors, flowers will serve that purpose well ...

http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article27954250.html

[stage left]

1. As a white daughter of the American South,

I'm in agreement with Mr. Smith. Pull down the flag and put it away.

[hornyfrog]

2. furl the flag

To quote from Will Henry Thompson's poem "High Tide at Gettysburg": Furl the flags, smelt the guns, love's gentler purpose runs. A might mother with tears recalls her battle years, lamenting all her fallen sons."