Cultural Cleansing Resumes

 

Cultural Cleansing Resumes

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA) March 25, 2023

            In my home atop a bookshelf stand two small flags beside each other. One is Old Glory; the other is the Confederate Cross. I treasure both.

            My grandfather and great-grandfather lived under the Confederate flag. My father was born only 29 years after the so-called Civil War ended. A civil war it truly wasn’t. Most history books and dictionaries define a civil war as one in which two sides within a nation are vying for control of the government. Such was not the case in America from 1861-1865. As Jefferson Davis himself put it, “We do not wish to take control of America’s government or its Capital city. We only desire to be left alone. What a free man joins he has the right to un-join.”

            It’s hard to argue with Davis’ last point. Why, though, after a century and a half, would a columnist bring up a war that settled decisively not whether or not the South had a right to secede, but whether or not the South was able to continue its efforts to secede. The South was not and lost the war.  Call it what you will, this war, like all other major wars of the world, still haunts us. Why? Because the past is not over yet and never will be. Shakespeare said it best, “What’s past is prologue.”

            An effort in the Georgia House of Representatives to continue the war and to cleanse Georgians of their past has been named House Bill 794. If made law 794 would remove Stone Mt. Park’s official designation as a Confederate memorial.

            The expression “to memorialize” means to speak, write, or build something that will help people remember something, but Democrat state representatives Mary Margaret Oliver,  Omari Crawford, and Billy Mitchell, want us to forget something. Defending the bill, Oliver stated that 794 is needed “to cease our honoring the Confederacy and adhering to a lost cause.”  Crawford claims that “honoring any Confederate history hinders diversity and is inconsistent with Dekalb County’s present-day values.” Mitchell echoed, “We have been waiting too long for action by the Stone Mt. Memorial Authority to act on needed change to the false history of the park and the Confederate carving.”

            False history? Were the three men carved in stone – reluctant secessionist Jefferson Davis, the much respected Robert E. Lee, and Christian statesman Stonewall Jackson – not truly three of the most prominent Confederate figures? Thirteen other Democrat House members have co-sponsored 794, meaning that at least 16 state representatives believe there are certain things about the past that Georgians should not remember.

            Cleansers / erasers of our culture have been toppling statues they don’t like for decades. Paused by Covid, they are now back at it. They are sanctimonious. If you like what they don’t like, you are evil. If you support anything about the Confederacy, you’re a racist. My question is how do the erasers like those named above know my heart or the heart of any Georgians? How could a white man who honors Confederate memorials as I do volunteer to teach at an all black school in order to help get integration underway?

            There also stands in my home a picture which I treasure much more than I treasure the Confederate flag. It is the picture of my unforgettable colleagues at George Washington Carver Junior High School with whom I taught in 1967-68 in Meridian, Mississippi. Representative Oliver and company must think I’m bipolar. If I am, then so were Robert E. Lee and William Faulkner. Lee loved the Union, but when asked by Lincoln to command the Union forces he declined, stating that he could not fight against the people of Virginia. Faulkner, honored around the world for his writing, answered “Yes, of course” when asked if he would have fought for Mississippi during the Civil War. Typically one likes to defend his own people and region, but that doesn’t mean one approves of everything said or done in his own region.

            Self-appointed cleansers should cease judging people by the color of their skin. Rev. Al Sharpton, a sympathizer of the cleansers, should correct his unforgiving spirit, as so many blacks have, and act more like Martin Luther King. I wish that haters of memorials believed in freedom of expression.

            I also wish that cleansers could have known my Carver Junior High principal who once said to me, “If we should learn anything from history, it’s that ‘what the world needs now is love, sweet love’.” Principal Sykes and I both loved the song that Dionne Warwick would later record. Principal Sykes would not have favored the erasing of history.