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Journalism of Courage
On July 10, South Carolina state troopers ceremonially lowered the Confederate battle flag — a historic but deeply divisive banner of the American Civil War — from a pole outside the Statehouse for permanent retirement in a museum. The push came after Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old white supremacist who massacred nine African Americans at a black church in Charleston on June 17, was seen in pictures holding Confederate flags.
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Parts of the flag’s design were incorporated into state flags of Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Alabama, over the protests of African American civil rights groups who viewed it as a symbol of a brutal past. The flag has flown over several Southern cities, and has been adopted by the Ku Klux Klan.
The flag was raised in the South Carolina House of Representatives chambers in 1938, and over the Statehouse in 1961, to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War. After years of campaigning by opponents, it was moved, in 2000, from the Statehouse dome to a pole at the base of the Confederate monument on the Statehouse grounds.
A backlash has, however begun. An 8-mile, 1,500-vehicle,‘Florida Southern Pride Ride’ parade was taken out to show support for the Confederate flag in Florida on Sunday. And commentators have underlined that notwithstanding the symbolism, discrimination and inequality remain widespread in the US. — AP
