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Confederate symbol under fire as calls widen to ‘take down the flag”

Yawu Miller
Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO

When Bree Newsome, a 30-year-old activist from Charlotte, North Carolina, scaled the flagpole at a Confederate Civil War memorial next to the South Carolina State House, grabbed the Confederate battle flag, descended and was arrested, the bold move signaled a shift in the long-simmering battle over the controversial symbol of the slaveholding Confederacy.

Within the space of a week, a parade of prominent politicians denounced the flag, including President Obama, Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and prominent South Carolina Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

“For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation,” the president said, delivering a eulogy for the Rev. Clementa Pinkney, one of the nine killed by Charleston church shooter Dylan Root June 17. “We see that now. Removing the flag from the state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness. … It would simply be an acknowledgement that the cause for which they fought, the cause of slavery, was wrong.”

Those denunciations were preceded by numerous anti-Confederate flag petitions, essays and columns posted on social media. The flag was thrust into the media spotlight by images uploaded by Root and the white hate groups that inspired him, images in which the Confederate battle flag was a near-constant presence.

The anti-flag fervor was further stoked by visuals of the U.S. and South Carolina flags flying at half-mast to mourn the deaths of the nine victims of Root’s shooting while the Confederate flag flew at full height.

The flag has been a divisive symbol in the South since the early 1960s, when legislators chafed at federal desegregation laws dismantling the decades-old Jim Crow laws. As the flag flew over state houses and public buildings in the deep South, it underscored Southern defiance to the North, echoing the attitudes that led to succession and war a hundred years earlier.

Local controversy

The Confederate flag has sparked controversy in Massachusetts, as well. Back in the 1960s, Walpole High School sports teams adopted the nickname The Rebels and began using it as an emblem. The school stopped using the symbol in 1994, but a Confederate battle flag painted on plywood overlooks the school’s sports fields planted on the property of a 1969 Walpole High graduate.

While southern whites have defended the flag as part of their heritage, many southern blacks say they see the flag as a symbol of whites’ stubborn defense of slavery and black subjugation.

“For far too long, white supremacy has dominated the politics of America, resulting in the creation of racist laws and cultural practices designed to subjugate nonwhites,” said Bree Newsome, in a statement released to the news website Blue Nation Review. “And the emblem of the confederacy, the stars and bars, in all its manifestations, has long been the most recognizable banner of this political ideology. It’s the banner of racial intimidation and fear whose popularity experiences an uptick whenever black Americans appear to be making gains economically and politically in this country.”

All the internet petitions and political grandstanding in the world, however, has yet to bring down the Confederate flag flying in front of North Carolina’s state house in Raleigh. Decades of southern defiance — of the North and of the African American residents of the state — flows from flag protection by state law, as is the case in South Carolina. The only way to legally lower or remove the flag from its perch there is through a majority vote of the state legislature. There is not even a rope-pulley system, a common feature on most flag poles, to raise or lower the flag.

‘Fight with all vigor’

So Newsome and a band of anti-racist activists decided a white man and a black woman would team up to bring the flag down. Newsome’s job was to don a climbing harness and shimmy up the pole to cut the flag loose. She did so, above the objections of state police officers, who waited for her to descend, then took her into custody.

In the days that followed, Newsome has become a social media folk hero. Supporters have donated more than $112,000 for Newsome’s legal defense. In her press statement, she pledged to continue to fight white supremacy.

“It is important to remember that our struggle doesn’t end when the flag comes down,” she said. “The Confederacy is a southern thing, but white supremacy is not. Our generation has taken up the banner to fight battles many thought were won long ago. We must fight with all vigor now so that our grandchildren aren’t still fighting these battles in another 50 years. Black Lives Matter. This is non-negotiable.”