Stop flying that flag

[struggle4progress]

By Lowell Grisham
Posted: August 23, 2016 at 1 a.m.

I am a son of the South. A fifth-generation Mississippian. My ancestors fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. I grew up in a town where we honor our Confederate soldiers with two statues and a famous stained-glass window. I grew up with the old Confederate soldier Col. Rebel as the mascot for my high school and my college athletic teams.

We waved Confederate battle flags to cheer the Colonels (high school) and the Rebels (college). Our fight song was Dixie. When traveling to out-of-town games I would put two rebel flags on the front bumper of my Oldsmobile 88. I thought it looked like the ambassador's car for the Rebels. The cherished nickname for my university is "Ole Miss." It's a term slaves used to refer to the wife of the plantation owner. This is the culture I was steeped in.

Sometime in college I awakened to the realization that the Confederate flag was not a simple Mississippi version of a pom-pom or a benign symbol of our Southern heritage. I learned it was also a symbol of white supremacy and racism.

I remember how jarred I was when I first saw a Confederate flag stretched across the back trunk of a car headed to a racist rally, a car with the words "I hate n----- lovers" painted on its back window, and a face I can only think of as the face of evil, looking at me out of the driver's window not five feet from my face screaming, "Let's go git 'em," as we passed with windows open going in opposite directions. I had only seen cars decorated that way going to a football game ...

http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2016/aug/23/lowell-grisham-stop-flying-that-flag-20/?opinion

[drray23]

1. this is puzzling to me.

So, he says he was driving an oldsmobile 1988. So he is not that old. He was in college in the 90's.
What I find amazing is that somebody from Missisippi did not know in the 1990's the association between
the confederate flag and white supremacy.

[ret5hd]

2. Oldsmobile 88 is a model not a year

[drray23]

3. never mind..

Yes. I see on wikipedia, it says they were manufactured from 1949 to 1999. This guy could have been in college in the 60's. This was the heydays of the civil right movement. Still, I suppose its a little more understandable put in the context of Mississippi in the 60's.

[tonyt53]

4. Not that simple. As somebody from KY, I see it still, even this far north.

It is ingrained in the culture. I live along the Ohio River. We see some of it here, but nothing like the people south of us. The people of this state that live along the TN border still have the same attitude described in the article. Confederate flags abound on vehicles and on poles in yards. Venture into rural TN, MS. AL, LA, AR, SC, or GA. Hell in some of those states you don't even have to get into the rural areas.

[Shoonra]

5. The Confederate flag had its ups and downs ....

The Confederate flag was not flown all that much in the south when I was a little boy in Florida .... until after the the May 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, calling for an end to racial segregation in public schools. Then, suddenly, the Rebel Flag came out of moth balls and it was as if the Civil War was never quite ended. That flag was brought out for "Southern Traditions" -- it took me a while (I was a bit slow on this) to realize that the only traditions being honored were institutionalized discrimination against African-Americans.

When it was explained to me, and I was a young teenager then, there was no talk of hatred or inferiority, just "this is the way we've always done it and everyone gets along just fine". And the Rebel Flag was the insignia of this mind-set.

But in the past 30 or 40 years, some of the people who used to support segregation gave up, maybe learned better, and took down that flag - but other people kept it up or even picked it up to show that they still had a bad attitude about their neighbors.

I recently read a news item that, in Germany where the swastika flag is legally forbidden, neo-nazi organizations are actually flying the Confederate Battle Flag as the new Nazi flag.

[vinny9698]

6. The irony is now that same group wants to take credit for freeing the slaves. The GOP

The same GOP that now waves the Confederate flag.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121617172687056531
The same GOP that in the Civil War would have shot anyone waving the Confederate Flag.

[struggle4progress]

7. The last of the Grand Army of the Republic marched across the Great Divide many years ago

But sometimes we can still hear their voices outraged against the traitors