School's in Session

DISCLAIMER:  The views expressed in the following are strictly that of the author.


Last week, I footnoted my column by promising you a free history lesson this week.
Every once in a while, I will see a vehicle with a Confederate Battle Flag sticker (the one you see atop the General Lee in "The Dukes of Hazzard") on their vehicle, with the caption beneath it stating "If this offends you, you need a history lesson."
That's highly open to argument, since we all have different lessons to teach behind it, I'm sure.
In recent years, I've grown closer to our neighbors south of the Mason-Dixon line.  The main reason is because I get more and more tired of cold weather each passing year, but also because I've learned about a culture much more unique and diverse than my own.
As we celebrate the upcoming observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, we can never lose sight of the Confederate Flag and just what it means.
By the majority, it still remains a dark reminder of a country so divided by racial philosophy that it split in two halves.
There I digress.  Here's my history lesson.
An editorial cartoon in 1864 depicted U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Confederacy President Jefferson Davis each pulling at an end of a map of the United States.  Standing between them with a handful of each man's collar was General George B. McClellan, the Democratic Presidential candidate that year running against Lincoln, yelling at both men "The Union must be preserved at all hazards!"
As they're tugging on the map, Lincoln is saying "No peace without emancipation!"
Davis says "No peace without separation!"
Nonetheless, McClellan lost the election.  The Confederacy lost the war.  Slavery was finally abolished.
Lincoln was assassinated by a Southern sympathizer.
But the war was far from over.  Though the blood was no longer shed on the battlefields, all the fighting was relegated to the Rebel states, now determined more than ever to keep the newly-freed Negroes to a status beneath that of the now-angry poor Whites, steadfastly refusing to accept a people once sold as common possessions as equals.
And I'm sure the general consensus of the newly-freed slaves at first was joyous, but may have dwindled to  one of indifference after awhile.
Because slaves were considered property, and not the people they rightfully were, laws were quickly enacted in many former Confederate states prohibiting Negroes to own land to try and eke out a living to support themselves.
In Southern folklore, you may have read at one point or another about a white family with a domestic help that kept house and did other such chores in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It wasn't because the family was wealthy.  The sudden abundance of low cost labor made domestic help affordable for many southern families.  It also gave former slaves their freedom while also protecting the security (but hopefully with the absence of the cruelty this time) they had while still a slave.
It would take years to craft laws that recognized African-Americans in their rightful place in American society as human beings with the same rights as Whites.
Unfortunately, among those laws were those that created the practice of segregation that would dominate the deep South for almost a century.
Many political figures in the early 1800s, who supported the slavery movement, tried to justify its necessity in America.  Most infamous was John C. Calhoun, who served as U.S. Vice President under John Quincy Adams, calling it "a positive good":

" in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age, is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers."

All I can say to Mr. Calhoun is this:
"REALLY???"
While I agree with Mr. Calhoun that one portion of the community must live on the labor of another, especially in a free enterprise system, it does not, at any time, justify involuntary unpaid servitude to a single human being by another.
I always found ironic the fact that most who saw African-Americans beneath them and treated them to extremes as such, still went to church on Sunday and could recite much of the Bible verbatim.
The job is still not done.  I believe that for the most part, Dr. King's dream was fulfilled.  The biggest proof of that is in the White House, and now into his second term.
Nonetheless, hate crimes continue in this country that target African-Americans, homosexuals, Hispanics, the homeless, and countless others.  Will it ever end in our lifetimes?  Probably not.
What we can look forward to is the fact that we as a society have advanced by leaps and bounds since 1865.  I can see distinct differences in just the past 25 years.
We can't eliminate hate in our culture, but we can reduce the numbers of those who do hate.
The lesson is this:
The Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of a country divided, but managed to overcome the darkness of the past and successfully chart a course for its future.  It should not be regarded as a symbol of hate or dread, but one of change.  A culture that would make peace with its past and evolved over time, becoming more recognized for its food, music, architecture, faith base, and even fine arts.
At least that's the way this Southern Yankee sees it.
Class dismissed.


NEXT WEEK:  Moving On