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White Citizens' Councils
Jun. 22nd, 2015 12:51 pmI'm from Texas, and vocally so. However, my Dad's side of the family is from Greenwood, Missisippi. That's where the bulk of the Stotts wound up. The Wests, his mom's family, were out of Virginia. Through both of those lineages, I trace back to the Confederacy. I don't think the Stotts had any slaves; I could be wrong, but I don't think they were rich enough. I think they genuinely fought for the Confederacy because of states rights and all that. One of which was the right to be a racist crazy murderer.
If you don't recognize the name Greenwood, Missisippi, you probably haven't read much 20th century civil rights history. Greenwood features prominently, not in a good way. As an example, my grandfather Roy, when he was a kid, was the neighbor of the Klansman who murdered Medgar Evers. Who was not convicted for the murder until 1994 even though everyone knew he did it because he bragged about it a lot and there was ample physical evidence. He was not convicted because the Greenwood Police Department provided him with a fraudulent alibi. Roy's aunt (and for all I know other members of the family) was prominently involved in fundraising for the big Confederate statue in the middle of Greenwood, which was not for her about slavery but about her relatives. Dad's high school job was giving tours of Confederate sites, because he liked (and still likes) history. You would not believe the amount of Civil War memorabilia that is in my house.
I like Dad's family and don't have any memories of them being openly racist; kind of the opposite. Roy for instance spent WWII as an officer in an African American unit, which he volunteered to do - blacks weren't allowed to be officers but whites didn't want to work with them, whereas in Roy's experience they were as good as anybody else. Roy's unit, being black, was of course then put into dangerous cannon fodder advance-guard "set up the infrastructure for everybody else to land" situations. Roy's sister Rena taught in low income schools (which was pretty much every school in Missisippi) and didn't make a distinction between black and white students, which is only notable if you remember how violently Greenwood fought desegregation.
My point here is to say that when people talk about Southern Heritage, I have it. If I want to claim the Confederate flag as my symbol, I can. I can grouch as well as anyone about how it's the battle flag of Northern Virginia and the flags of the whole confederacy looked like this*. (For battle flags, the Van Dorn flag is obviously the best looking one, and you never see it anywhere.) That's how deep in this I am. If you've ever wondered who watches those thousands of hours of civil war documentaries and donates money to preserve the battlefield at Gettysburg - us! It's us. It's my family.
I have a hand-me-down battle flag towel which I use sometimes to clean up things I find gross, the act of defacing it a useful distraction. I sometimes drink out of a Mississippi mug which has the battle flag on it as well as the state flag which has a mini battle flag in the corner. The current Missisippi flag was introduced in 1894 as a fuck-you to reconstructionists. If Missippi actually wanted to be historic, it could use the older 1861 Magnolia flag, which is better looking and was actually flown during the Civil War. (I don't think they flew a state flag before that.) It also naturally has a confederate symbol, the bonnie blue flag, in the corner. But this was not considered sufficiently "in your face." The mug also has other Mississippi symbols on it, like a canon and some cotton and the statehouse and a mockingbird. (Conspicuously absent: a blues guitar.)
You know what I think of as a symbol of the genteel south we're all proud of? Southern hospitality. You know what is not hospitable? Flying a big flag that says "you're not welcome here, and we really want to make sure you know that." If we wanted to act like real southerners, we would take down the flag and talk behind people's backs while smiling and handing out pie and iced tea. That's how it's done. Notably, burning crosses are also a symbol of Southern history, plus they are on fire, yet we do not insist on putting eternal-flame burning crosses in front of or on top of our statehouses, even though they would definitely look cool.
But of course this isn't really about pride or about history. And that is why I propose we offer an exchange, wherein any depiction of the battle flag is repaced with an equal-sized picture of Taz, Calvin peeing, or Calvin peeing on Taz.
God, how awful would it have been if the south had successfully seceeded? That was a terrible idea.
* [24 July 2015] This link originally went to http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/flags-confederacy, but that page disappeared a day after the entry was posted - I'd like to think the Museum of the Confederacy pulled down their site in an act of solidarity and support for the flag's removal more broadly, but I have no idea. They seem to have completely rebranded overnight as the American Civil War Museum, which I think they've technically been since 2014 but which was not on any of their branding previous to now.
If you don't recognize the name Greenwood, Missisippi, you probably haven't read much 20th century civil rights history. Greenwood features prominently, not in a good way. As an example, my grandfather Roy, when he was a kid, was the neighbor of the Klansman who murdered Medgar Evers. Who was not convicted for the murder until 1994 even though everyone knew he did it because he bragged about it a lot and there was ample physical evidence. He was not convicted because the Greenwood Police Department provided him with a fraudulent alibi. Roy's aunt (and for all I know other members of the family) was prominently involved in fundraising for the big Confederate statue in the middle of Greenwood, which was not for her about slavery but about her relatives. Dad's high school job was giving tours of Confederate sites, because he liked (and still likes) history. You would not believe the amount of Civil War memorabilia that is in my house.
I like Dad's family and don't have any memories of them being openly racist; kind of the opposite. Roy for instance spent WWII as an officer in an African American unit, which he volunteered to do - blacks weren't allowed to be officers but whites didn't want to work with them, whereas in Roy's experience they were as good as anybody else. Roy's unit, being black, was of course then put into dangerous cannon fodder advance-guard "set up the infrastructure for everybody else to land" situations. Roy's sister Rena taught in low income schools (which was pretty much every school in Missisippi) and didn't make a distinction between black and white students, which is only notable if you remember how violently Greenwood fought desegregation.
My point here is to say that when people talk about Southern Heritage, I have it. If I want to claim the Confederate flag as my symbol, I can. I can grouch as well as anyone about how it's the battle flag of Northern Virginia and the flags of the whole confederacy looked like this*. (For battle flags, the Van Dorn flag is obviously the best looking one, and you never see it anywhere.) That's how deep in this I am. If you've ever wondered who watches those thousands of hours of civil war documentaries and donates money to preserve the battlefield at Gettysburg - us! It's us. It's my family.
I have a hand-me-down battle flag towel which I use sometimes to clean up things I find gross, the act of defacing it a useful distraction. I sometimes drink out of a Mississippi mug which has the battle flag on it as well as the state flag which has a mini battle flag in the corner. The current Missisippi flag was introduced in 1894 as a fuck-you to reconstructionists. If Missippi actually wanted to be historic, it could use the older 1861 Magnolia flag, which is better looking and was actually flown during the Civil War. (I don't think they flew a state flag before that.) It also naturally has a confederate symbol, the bonnie blue flag, in the corner. But this was not considered sufficiently "in your face." The mug also has other Mississippi symbols on it, like a canon and some cotton and the statehouse and a mockingbird. (Conspicuously absent: a blues guitar.)
You know what I think of as a symbol of the genteel south we're all proud of? Southern hospitality. You know what is not hospitable? Flying a big flag that says "you're not welcome here, and we really want to make sure you know that." If we wanted to act like real southerners, we would take down the flag and talk behind people's backs while smiling and handing out pie and iced tea. That's how it's done. Notably, burning crosses are also a symbol of Southern history, plus they are on fire, yet we do not insist on putting eternal-flame burning crosses in front of or on top of our statehouses, even though they would definitely look cool.
But of course this isn't really about pride or about history. And that is why I propose we offer an exchange, wherein any depiction of the battle flag is repaced with an equal-sized picture of Taz, Calvin peeing, or Calvin peeing on Taz.
God, how awful would it have been if the south had successfully seceeded? That was a terrible idea.
* [24 July 2015] This link originally went to http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/flags-confederacy, but that page disappeared a day after the entry was posted - I'd like to think the Museum of the Confederacy pulled down their site in an act of solidarity and support for the flag's removal more broadly, but I have no idea. They seem to have completely rebranded overnight as the American Civil War Museum, which I think they've technically been since 2014 but which was not on any of their branding previous to now.
