Alfonse D'Amato

A flag whose time had come and gone

Posted

On June 2, 1865, Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signed surrender terms offered by the Union army. Smith’s surrender marked the end of the bloodiest four years in U.S. history. One hundred fifty years later, the Confederate flag, a symbol of supposed racial superiority and hate, is still raised proudly and prominently in the South.

On June 17, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, sat inside a historic African-American church, listened to a prayer group and then opened fire, gunning down nine innocent people. He confessed that he “wanted to start a race war again.” He failed. Instead, the shooting has brought a nation together to diminish racism’s most popular symbol, the Confederate flag.

Less than a week after the shooting, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was among the first to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state Capitol.

I understand the great history of the South and the Civil War, but the respect given to the Confederate flag, so clearly a symbol of bigotry, is astonishing. After the shooting, the flag was not lowered to half-staff with the other flags at the South Carolina State House, because the authority to do so rests with the state’s General Assembly. Removing it from the State House is also up to the General Assembly, but that will now change.

In a press conference with Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, Haley said, “Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state, without ill will, to say it is time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds. It will be fitting that our state Capitol will soon fly the flags of our country and state, and no others.”

The time to move forward is long past due. The Confederate flag is a symbol of the worst times in this nation, and is now used by groups to promulgate hatred.

Elected officials and community leaders are exerting pressure everywhere, and now major retailers including Amazon, eBay, Sears, Walmart and Target have pledged to stop selling Confederate flag merchandise.

Page 1 / 2