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Posted on 04/13/2002 10:36:17 PM PDT by JohnnyReb1983
RALEIGH, N.C. (2001-01-25) Vicky Poston is a Reb with a cause.
When Alcoa Inc. banned Confederate symbols from workers' cars at its North Carolina plant last year, Ms. Poston did something rare for a propriety-conscious Southerner: She took to the streets in protest.
As big rigs honked in support and a protester waved the battle flag from a Ford Mustang convertible, Poston and 150 activists pushed the big aluminum firm to scale back its ban on Confederate license plates, bumper stickers, and other regalia.
After years of enduring similar prohibitions on things Confederate, emboldened Southerners are increasingly donning their Dixie duds and unfurling traditional state flags in defense of embattled Southern heroes and symbols.
From the palm-fronded streets of Charleston, S.C., to the historic storefronts of Selma, Ala., the movement reflects a reawakening of traditional Southern pride and a strong sense of regionalism.
Indeed, the growing backlash against efforts to take down the flag - including the recent legislative battles in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi - may signal a deeper shift in Southern culture. The rise of a new political class of Confederate sympathizers indicates that many are ready to reawaken Confederate ideals such as states' rights and sovereignty.
To be sure, Southern partisanship evokes images of Jim Crow and slavery to much of the country. And ominous motives may well lie behind some of the activists. Yet experts say many of those embracing the new movement are driven more by regional pride, resistance to the Federal government, and a desire to reconnect with a lost heritage. They'd like to recast the South as the last bastion of civility, independence, and constitutional ideals.
Critics, though, see darker tones in the surge in Southern pride - and a collision with the values of the New South.
"These guys are very much building the intellectual capital which they hope to make the foundation for a ... reborn Confederacy," says Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report in Montgomery, Ala. And the size scares him. "You have 9,000 and 15,000-person membership rolls, huge groups littered with PhDs, doctors, and lawyers, which are vastly more politically dangerous than any Klan or neo-Nazi group could ever be."
Southern partisans are certainly rallying the troops:
*Last Saturday, more than 2,000 people showed up in Atlanta to celebrate the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee - most years, the celebration draws about 300 people.
*Southerners are increasingly putting up new Confederate monuments along the South's tobacco roads. A statue of a controversial Civil War general went up near a black neighborhood in Selma, Ala., late last year.
*This weekend, League of the South will open its North Carolina State University chapter in Raleigh - one in a string of recent gambits to bring Southern youths back to Confederate ideals. The director says the league's South Carolina chapter saw a 300 percent increase in membership last year.
*After a five-year planning period, the Southern Party was formed last year in Asheville, N.C. It advocates regional independence and the end of the South's role as "the nation's whipping boy."
In perhaps the greatest show of Confederate unity yet, thousands of battle flags went up on memorials and front lawns across South Carolina the day they removed the flag from the statehouse last June. "It was like Christmas in Cuba," says Mike Tuggle, the leader of a Southern independence group in Charlotte, N.C.
Some say the pro-Southern activities are in part a reaction to anti-Southern efforts. "People are having to stand up for what they believe in," says Chris Sullivan, editor of the conservative Southern Partisan magazine in Columbia, S.C.
Despite an explosion in their numbers, these new Confederate sympathizers, like their forefathers, are still outnumbered.
Southern partisans are losing the big battles. A travel boycott by the 500,000-strong NAACP finally pushed the South Carolina legislature to move the Southern cross state flag from the top of the State House to a nearby soldier's memorial. On Wednesday, facing a similar boycott threat, Georgia's House of Representatives voted to redesign the state flag to minimize the Southern cross.
And in what promises to be a bellwether gauge of the feelings of the New South, Mississippi residents will go to the polls for an April referendum to decide what to do about the Confederate insignia on their state flag.
While many Southerners claim the St. Andrew's cross is a proud symbol of a heritage and principles their forefathers fought to save, others call it an "ugly memory." They recall the 1950s, when many state capitols unfurled it as a show of Southern defiance against federal desegregation measures.
And the idea that the country has decided to erase all things Southern is unfounded, says Potok. "The war occurred, and there's no point in pretending it didn't. Besides, removing all signs of the Civil War is a little akin to the Soviets airbrushing assassinated leaders out of photographs."
In the end, the reawakening of Confederate ideals is about much more than tugging on an old flag. Deeper historical, religious, and political forces are at work, says Walter Williams, chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. "A lot of this might be the resurrection of some ... issues that led up to the War Between the States in 1861," he says. "Specifically, the heavyhandedness of the federal government. And that's why you're seeing a lot of renewed interest in the 10th Amendment and states' rights."
At least in the South, the old Confederate ideas have found fresh root in the red Dixie clay. "I think it comes down to the simple fact that [people] are alienated in modern life," says Mr. Tuggle. "There are a lot of changes going on.... The Confederate heritage gives you something very important to hold onto."
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She truly is. Here is a quote from one of her friends; another "Steel Magnolia":
“It may be that the South won't need to rise again. It may be that all we'll have to do is remain standing while the rest of America falls.” --Connie Ward
While Southern states never refuse federal dollars to subsidize the vast poverty, horrendous schools, inadequate healthcare etc. etc. etc., they are up in arms when the National Guard is needed to integrate schools, or when the Justice Department is needed federalize the prosecution of Klan trials, otherwise they'd never be charged for murders, lynchings, etc.
Of course, "state rights" to fly the flag of a failed army, or to own another man supercede the modern, Constitutionally protected rights of citizens of Southern states to vote to have the flag of the failed revolution removed from the state capitals.
************
As long as the Union
Was faithful to her trust,
Like friends and like brothers
Both kind were we and just;
But now, when Northern treachery
Attempts our rights to mar,
We hoist on high the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Southern rights hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag
That bears a single star.
**************
Southern pride is simply an active "subset" of American pride; the two have never been mutually exclusive. If you don't care for that fact, well, that pleases me tenfold.
Two brothers on their way,
Two brothers on their way,
Two brothers on their way,
One wore blue and one wore gray.
One wore blue and one wore gray,
As they marched along their way,
As they marched along their way,
The fife and drum began to play,
All on a beautiful morning.
One was gentle, one was kind,
One was gentle, one was kind,
One came home, one stayed behind,
A cannonball don't pay no mind.
Cannonball don't pay no mind,
If you're gentle or if you're kind,
It don't think of the folks behind.
All on a beautiful morning,
All on a beautiful morning.
***************
The fact is that I am a proud, northern bred yankee with little or no predudice except against revisionist history biggots who claim the confederate flag does not represent a group of southern states who fought and died for states rights against a pigheaded government who believed otherwise.
To say the flag represents slavery and white oppression is just pure biggoted bunk.
The proper english would be "delusion, it is." or "delusions, they are."
Which formerly banned FReeper are you?
WhiskeyPapa was banned in mid thread for a comment like that a couple of weeks ago but he is back now.
Was A+Bert a Yankee?
The states rights issue was the overall problem. Admittedly, slavery was wrapped up in this bundle of problems and was basic to the rights the south was trying to hold on to. It was not the only issue. The south wanted to be left alone. They rebelled, fought, died and the entire industrial base was destroyed.
That flag, is as much a part of southern history as the declaration of independence is to the 13 colonies. To force it's demise will forever be like pushing a noodle. Waste of time IMHO.
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