“You had the same argument they put in South Carolina, that this is part of their heritage,” Holmes said in a phone interview. “And I told them it was part of your heritage that your forefathers fought under the Confederate flag trying to keep my forefathers in slavery.” – Rep. Alvin Holmes (D) Alabama (1988)
Male workers took down the Confederate flag at the Alabama capitol building quietly and without fanfare at 8:20 AM the summer of 2015. The South Will Rise Again. These are words I saw on T-Shirts and as an acronym in yearbooks growing up in Birmingham, AL. A “privileged” few, but it was there. I was taught that I was no different than anyone else at a very young age. “Nigger” was a curse to me as hateful as “motherfucker” or the one we abbreviate with a “GD.” The confederate flag was something that hurt me, maybe, in the way I thought a swastika was a symbol from the devil and a Nazi flag something I didn’t want to take in with my eyes because I knew I couldn’t get the images back out of my mind.
Can you understand that? A flag. Whether you wave it or hang it outside your door, you do so with a sense of pride, it’s something you’re passionate about, it’s inspiring you to battle, and it moves through the air with all the images from the past painted into your memory.
There are many people that are angry that the confederate flag was taken down not just in Montgomery, AL but in South Carolina and Tennessee as well. “It’s sensationalism.” Something tragic and violent happened at the hands of someone waving the stars and bars once again and everyone jumps on the bandwagon to rip down the flags, a flag that should have been down long ago. “It’s a heart problem, not a flag issue.” Yes, but you do not remove the connotations from something that is symbolic, representational. Whose blood are we dipping the confederate flag this time to erase enough of its history so that it is only a history lesson, not a scroll that lists the names of the dead and words of hatred. 
And what about the problem of the hearts of we who hurt because it was up on government property at all. “It’s a southern thang, ya’ll wouldn’t understand.” Like sweet tea is southern. Like being southern means being kind. Like fried foods are southern. Like southerners are seen as slow talking drawl, people that live in a single wide trailer with tireless cars bricked up in their yard, bare feet and cutoff jeans, smoking Marlboros while talking and never losing the cig, unintelligent hillbillies, flying their confederate flag in a yard that needed mowed a month ago – understand?. “It’s our heritage.” It isn’t my heritage. It’s a generational curse I’d like to break in my family. A curse that started shattering years ago. In fact, it surprised me that these flags were still up to take down. Are we all walking around in civil war garb reenacting a historical event on a weekend with respect and pride to the pages of a history book? Marching in a Veteran’s Day Parade? Maybe a confederate flag might appear there, in a tableau of the past, where it should have stayed.
Since, the flags shimmied down the flag post, the biggest shows of angry rebellion has come from big trucks with lifts, mud riding-jeeps, and strangely enough – some Christians. I’ve seen people driving that went and got extra-large flags and propped them up on both sides of the truck so they could drive around town and show them to everyone because they’re proud, respecting history, because they want to remember their heritage? There are questions I want to ask. What are they proud of? What are they fighting for? What does it mean to them when they put their hand over their hearts? Because I’m southern “ya’ll” and I don’t get a “thang” about it. Especially, when it’s a string bikini barely covering a women’s nipples and “hoo-ha” as she honors the rebel flag while being objectified by men. Try being a rebel by learning history. You cannot fly a flag and only remember one piece of its past, it represents all who stood under it throughout history. Dipping it in all the blood that was shed for it and in the name of it black and white will never erase the pain. You remember.
While you do, I wish I could forget. I wish I could forget black soldiers that were forced to fight in wars and kept segregated by whites. I wish that I could forget the KKK marching with the confederate flag held firmly in their hands. I wish I could forget the graphic of a rebel flag hung over a cross, a cross burned in the yard of a black family who could go nowhere for protection. I wish I could forget the sounds of whips from movies, photos of those scarred at the hands of their “masters.” I wish I could forget the day I learned that lynching used to be watched by white southerners who would bring a blanket, a picnic basket and watch a hanging, while their children ran and played like it was “dinner on the 
grounds” after church. I wish I forget Emmett Till’s body as it lay in a casket swollen, beaten, castrated, and without life circulated by his mother so no one would turn an eye away to what was happening in the south. It is not farfetched to think the men that drowned him and maimed him owned a rebel flag or two back at their house. I wish I could forget that slavery isn’t over. 35.8 million people estimated to still be enslaved in our modern day world.
You remember that flag. The one that is no longer flying over the capitol of the state I grew up in. In fact, I’ll try to forget that it was ever there in the first place while my heart sinks every time your horn whistles Dixie while we’re stuck in traffic, and I have to stare at the enormous confederate flag flying from your truck. Knowing that nothing ever truly forgotten still has its on flag. I will choose to remember the most important thing about the confederate flag. The battle flag so “treasured” in the south was the flag General Lee surrendered under. It stands for surrender. That day they rolled it up. 
Defeated. If anything should rise again in the south, it is pure love … it is the mending that began long ago, it is sacrificing your history to realize someone else died horribly under the same flag. Remember together, in handshakes, conversations, and reconciliations of the past. Rise in love.
It was love they were praying in and for. Love that welcomed a young white man into a predominately black church with a beautiful history of its own. They were praying. He that held the gun, held the flag.
What do you want to be remembered for?
I choose praying.
Only, the color of my skin doesn’t put me in danger when I bow my head … not to someone who clings to that flag.
The flag you’re fighting for.
The battle is over.
Keep your hand over your heart
put down the stars and bars.
Love must be sincere, hate what is evil; cling to what is good. – Romans 12:9
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. – Matthew 7:12
Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer, and give up your sins — even those you do in secret. Then you won’t be ashamed; you will be confident and fearless. – Job 11:13-15
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