'Dead generals' and Confederate flags 'do not own the South,' says novelist Kent Wascom
By Jesse Chambers
on July 21, 2015 at 10:03 AM
updated July 21, 2015 at 10:46 AM
... The Civil War was a national cataclysm on a scale almost unimaginable to modern Americans, and I am all in favor of solemn memorials to those lost in the conflict. I am not in favor of state-sponsored monuments, statuary or an appropriated flag displayed in response to reconstruction or desegregation and with the express purpose of emblemizing white supremacy.
All my feelings were really catalyzed by researching the reconstruction era (when the statues of Lee, Beauregard, Davis, etc., were erected in New Orleans) for my next book. When you're sitting there noting the 50th execution-style headshot of the day, wholesale slaughter over denying men the right to vote, and later see the same slaughterers urging for statues to be erected to show that this was a "white man's city," you get an understanding of the intention of the monuments.
If people want to argue about changing or denying history, they'd better bone up. The Battle Flag was raised on the South Carolina statehouse grounds in the early '60s in direct response to desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement; among the monuments to be removed from New Orleans is one celebrating a coup by the "White League" in 1874. Given these specific contexts, what justification can there be for these displays?
Look, dead generals, whatever their tactical brilliance, do not own New Orleans or the South; flags do not own these states. To cease the display of emblems celebrating the tragic course of our history is not a denial, but a step in saving ourselves from being eternal victims of that history ...
http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/07/post_322.html
