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Flying the Confederate flag is not unlike Germany flying the Nazi flag. The swastika was "part of their history" but it is the epitome of the horrors that can been committed by the human race. The Confederate flag, like the Nazi flag, should be relegated to the history books (to learn from) and only the history books. The Civil War is a sad blemish on the history of this great nation. It should not be exalted or given any place of reverence.
You are absolutely right. When I see a white person with a Confederate flag/sticker/T-shirt, it tells me more about them than I think they may suspect they are communicating to the public.
Native Atlantan and southerner here. I had an excellent Georgia History teacher at Babb Junior High in Forest Park in the late 1980's. His name was Ted Key. Mr. Key was an inspirational teacher and a shining example of Christian character. He explained the Stone Mountain carvings thusly, "It is a monument to defeat." That is why everyone stands and cheers when the two halves of the Union reunite in the laser show, "His truth keeps marching on", Elvis sings as Robert E. Lee breaks his sword and America reunites. It doesn't celebrate the Confederacy, it celebrates American unity"out of many one"! God bless the U.S.A.
I have never thought of that but it makes sense. I don't know how anyone can keep a dry eye when Elvis is belting out the Battle hymn of the Republic.
Good relevant article on Stone Mountain in this week's Bitter Southern article: Go Tell It On the Mountain
Quote:
Go Tell It on the Mountain The last time he hiked to the top of Stone Mountain before embarking on a new life in South America, longtime Atlanta writer and novelist Charles McNair saw a ghost, had a dream and found a new, pure heart in the old mountain.
I had a dream.
The Georgia General Assembly funded a memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. and his top aides to be carved on Stone Mountain.
The lawmakers commissioned a bas-relief of MLK and John Lewis and Andy Young, this to be beveled into gray granite beside Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. (A half-century ago, the Georgia General Assembly maneuvered to have that holy trinity of notable Confederates, along with their horses, carved onto Stone Mountain.)
At dream speed, hundreds of stonemasons dangled by rope down the side of the most famous … and infamous … pluton in the South. They lit the fuses on sticks of dynamite. They pounded chisels. They swung picks and fired up thermojet torches.
In no time, they sculpted a brand new Stone Mountain monument.
When the artisans stood back to admire their work, they beheld the great black generals of the Civil Rights Movement. They stood side-by-side with the great white generals of the Civil War.
Here stood a New Stone Mountain.
Many felt the fresh sculpture symbolically represented a start and a finish. Here, a single mountain face held the profiles of Southern men of greatest prominence at the start and the true finish of our century-old American Civil War.
A century of Civil War? It can certainly be viewed that way. The fighting between the blue and the gray ended in 1865, but the ongoing battle for equality under the law between black and the white lasted another 99 years, culminating with the 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act.
So the new Stone Mountain stood for something. And, of course, the Georgia General Assembly wanted to make the attraction even better.
Lawmakers funded a new laser light show, twice as bright and dazzling. (Astronauts could see it from space.) They tripled the parking space to accommodate overflow crowds of visitors. Whites and blacks tailgated in racial harmony, knocking back Coca-Cola (with shots) and swapping recipes.
Stone Mountain Park sold MLK and Jeff Davis bobbleheads. Elvis sang over tinny loudspeakers, then James Brown took a turn. High school bands played Dixie and marched the five-mile path around the mountain. Then they marched around the mountain the other direction playing "We Shall Overcome."
Mass media fell in love. Social media fell in love too. Facebook buzzed like a billion bees. Twitter grew twitterpated.
Stone Mountain came to be an American version of the hajj, the trip to Mecca every able-bodied Muslim makes as an act of self-renewal. Every U.S. school kid grew up knowing he or she would visit Stone Mountain at least once in a lifetime.
All over the South, and then all over the world, lions lay down with lambs. Armies hammered swords into ploughshares.
People all just got along.
I am happy to have this space in The Bitter Southerner to pull a thorn out of my 61-year-old heart.
My daddy was a bigot. He grew up at the knees of bigots, in the age of bigots. He raised six kids as a bigot. He went to his grave, I truly believe, an unreconstructed bigot.
Don’t stop the presses. You’d be hard-pressed to find a white man raised in the Deep South in my father’s day who wasn’t a bigot … or at least complicit in bigotry.
Look, we get a lot of revisionists nowadays. Southerners or their families glance back 50 years and claim they were better than that. These wishful thinkers hide behind the handy smokescreen of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and pretend they behaved a whole lot more like Atticus Finch than bigoted Bob Ewell.
The truth? Most white people of the day sat on porches and dipped snuff and shelled peas and didn’t lift a finger while their yayhoo peers cracked the heads of blacks who had the audacity to think they ought to be able to vote or spend two bits at Woolworth’s. Or get a drink from a water fountain, for God's sake.
My daddy was one of those people. In the living room and at the polls and in the coffee shop, Charles Cunningham McNair, whose name I carry, supported politicians and positions most willing to prevent “the mongrelization of the races,” as I once heard him put it.
This meant, boiled down to its simplest terms, the blending of ethnicities that would inevitably follow integration and equal rights.
This Scots-English-Dutch-German-whatever-all-the-way-back-to-Africa mix … who married a Scots-Irish-German-whatever-all-the-way-back-to-Africa mix … and then created me and five other little McNair mixlings … felt the sudden urgent need to avoid mongrelization.
I am happy to have this space in The Bitter Southerner to pull a thorn out of my 61-year-old heart.
My daddy was a bigot. He grew up at the knees of bigots, in the age of bigots. He raised six kids as a bigot. He went to his grave, I truly believe, an unreconstructed bigot.
Don’t stop the presses. You’d be hard-pressed to find a white man raised in the Deep South in my father’s day who wasn’t a bigot … or at least complicit in bigotry.
Look, we get a lot of revisionists nowadays. Southerners or their families glance back 50 years and claim they were better than that. These wishful thinkers hide behind the handy smokescreen of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and pretend they behaved a whole lot more like Atticus Finch than bigoted Bob Ewell.
The truth? Most white people of the day sat on porches and dipped snuff and shelled peas and didn’t lift a finger while their yayhoo peers cracked the heads of blacks who had the audacity to think they ought to be able to vote or spend two bits at Woolworth’s. Or get a drink from a water fountain, for God's sake.
My daddy was one of those people. In the living room and at the polls and in the coffee shop, Charles Cunningham McNair, whose name I carry, supported politicians and positions most willing to prevent “the mongrelization of the races,” as I once heard him put it.
Wow, it sounds like he's got a burr under his saddle.
I will have to say that my own father, who grew up in that same generation, never once used bigoted language nor would he permit it in our household or allow me to be around it. He also never sat on a porch and dipped snuff.
Yes, like millions of others he lived and worked in a segregated world. Yet in my opinion, in small and quiet ways, he wanted change and attempted to make it happen. My dad raised his children to be aware of the issues. He didn't support rabble rousing racist politicians and he taught us kids not to do so either. He made sure we understood the news of the day during the civil rights era and who was good and who was not good, and why. He was stunned and angered by the murders of JFK and MLK. When some people wanted to close the schools rather than integrate he and my mother stood up against it. He was active in his church and supported the first blacks who attended. He carpooled with a black co-worker for several years.
Atticus Finch? By no means. But he was a sensible and decent man who tried to live by the golden rule and probably did a better job of it than me. I can't help but be a bit surprised by Mr. McNair's extremely broad brush painting.
Wow, it sounds like he's got a burr under his saddle.
I will have to say that my own father, who grew up in that same generation, never once used bigoted language nor would he permit it in our household or allow me to be around it. He also never sat on a porch and dipped snuff.
Yes, like millions of others he lived and worked in a segregated world. Yet in my opinion, in small and quiet ways, he wanted change and attempted to make it happen. My dad raised his children to be aware of the issues. He didn't support rabble rousing racist politicians and he taught us kids not to do so either. He made sure we understood the news of the day during the civil rights era and who was good and who was not good, and why. He was stunned and angered by the murders of JFK and MLK. When some people wanted to close the schools rather than integrate he and my mother stood up against it. He was active in his church and supported the first blacks who attended. He carpooled with a black co-worker for several years.
Atticus Finch? By no means. But he was a sensible and decent man who tried to live by the golden rule and probably did a better job of it than me. I can't help but be a bit surprised by Mr. McNair's extremely broad brush painting.
Life is a little more complicated than that.
It is more complicated then that. The full story is much longer I only pasted a bit of the start.
Wow, it sounds like he's got a burr under his saddle.
I will have to say that my own father, who grew up in that same generation, never once used bigoted language nor would he permit it in our household or allow me to be around it. He also never sat on a porch and dipped snuff.
Yes, like millions of others he lived and worked in a segregated world. Yet in my opinion, in small and quiet ways, he wanted change and attempted to make it happen. My dad raised his children to be aware of the issues. He didn't support rabble rousing racist politicians and he taught us kids not to do so either. He made sure we understood the news of the day during the civil rights era and who was good and who was not good, and why. He was stunned and angered by the murders of JFK and MLK. When some people wanted to close the schools rather than integrate he and my mother stood up against it. He was active in his church and supported the first blacks who attended. He carpooled with a black co-worker for several years.
Atticus Finch? By no means. But he was a sensible and decent man who tried to live by the golden rule and probably did a better job of it than me. I can't help but be a bit surprised by Mr. McNair's extremely broad brush painting.
Life is a little more complicated than that.
Most white northerners were bigots 60 years ago as well.
To some the rebel battle flag is symbolizing their own bigoted attitude.
For others its a symbol of pride challenging the bigotry and condescension of northerners against southerners.
When I moved to Ohio after living in Indiana and Kentucky, I was asked, "Are the kids in Indiana tall?" Answer yes. "Are the kids in Kentucky dumb?" Answer no. Southerners have put up with that in the media and from northerners for a long time.
It is more complicated then that. The full story is much longer I only pasted a bit of the start.
I know, I read the whole piece.
The author's experience is no doubt his own truth. However, I don't think he can extrapolate that to all southerners of that generation. I grew up around here and didn't get that sort of thing from my parental units.
My folks were definitely a product of their time but we weren't steeped in "Lost Cause" civil war historiography. I'm well aware of the history of Stone Mountain, too, but it wasn't a dominant image for us.
I have never thought of that but it makes sense. I don't know how anyone can keep a dry eye when Elvis is belting out the Battle hymn of the Republic.
I always get moved when I hear his American trilogy that starts with Dixie (Confederate song) and ends with the Battle hymn of the Republic (Union song).
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