What the removal of the rebel flag really means
Ethan Malveaux | 7/23/2015, 10:54 a.m.
... Let no one forget for nearly four quarters of the 20th century, the Confederate narrative dominated the generally accepted memory of the American experience: The Civil War was not primarily about slavery but about states’ rights; slavery, though a clumsy/controversial device, was necessary to civilize the Negro; the failure of 19th century integration was because of greedy carpetbaggers from the North and the incompetent Negro politicians they supported during Reconstruction, etc.
What may surprise Americans who aren’t historians is the fact that Northern whites roughly cosigned these views. Although separated on the issue of slavery, most whites of the 19th century agreed with the supposition that Blacks were inferior. Therefore, once the barrier of slavery was removed by the war, Northern whites found it relatively easy to turn their backs on Reconstruction so that a new United States could take its place as a world power. Led by industrialists and financiers from th e North, complicity with the Confederate narrative moved rapidly after the Grant administration ended in 1876. By 1890, the Confederate flag returned to public view, thereby harmonizing Southern racism and, more importantly, eugenic cosmopolitanism in the mainstream culture.
When Theodore Roosevelt came to power in 1901, this son of a Georgian mother who had relatives who fought for the Confederacy, further established Southern sentiment at the apex of power and cultural influence, while giving his imprimatur to Booker T. Washington’s segregated plan for Negro uplift in the South. The organization founded by Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1868, the Ku Klux Klan, became a prominent fixture in early 20th century politics because of its articles that espoused the “the supremacy of the Constitution” on the one hand and opposition “to Negro equality” on the other.
President Woodrow Wilson’s election in 1912 completed the process of Confederate history as American history. Wilson, heavily influenced by a Southern upbringing steeped with antipathy for Blacks, gave carte blanche support to a policy of segregation of the races. This policy coincided with the advent of a new medium that would do its share to influence historical perspective, the moving pictures. D.W. Griffith’s blockbuster “Birth of a Nation” glorified the Jim Crow South and Confederate nostalgia while denigrating the Negro in freedom ...
http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2015/jul/23/what-removal-rebel-flag-really-means/
