NEW SOUTH:
Altered opinions on rebel flag may reflect deeper changes.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Across the South, Confederate symbols are toppling, teetering or at least getting critical new looks. But is it a sign of real change in a region known for fiercely defending its complex traditions, or simply the work of frightened politicians and nervous corporate bean-counters scrambling for cover in the wake of another white-on-black atrocity?
Probably a bit of both, says Tracy Thompson, author of “The New Mind of the South.”
“I’m sure there’s a lot of expedient backtracking going on,” said Thompson. “If it’s going in the right direction, who cares?”
One who does care is the Rev. Joseph Darby, a friend of Clementa Pinckney, one of nine slain June 17 during a Bible study at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. He thinks it’s a bit premature to declare this a new “New South,” as some commentators have suggested.
“Taking down those flags is not that big a deal,” he said of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse lawn and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s order to take down four rebel banners from a memorial at his capitol. Some citizens have long taken offense to the flags, which they associate with racial conflict.
But Darby, who has been fighting since 1999 to bring down the Confederate flag, said, “I think it’s a first step that hopefully will lead to real change. If nothing else changes, it’ll ultimately be cosmetic.”
Still, even skeptics have to concede that the speed and geographic spread with which these developments have occurred are nothing short of historic. Governors in Virginia and North Carolina say the battle flag should come off specialty license plates; Georgia has stopped issuing the plates, and a bill to do the same was introduced by a Tennessee legislator. Arkansas-based WalMart vowed to stop selling all Confederate gear.
“One of the ways the South changes is through embarrassment, or through some incident,” said Ferrel Guillory, an expert on Southern culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Something dramatic happened — something tragic that stunned people,” said Guillory. “And it’s got them to move.”
But people said the same things in 1955, when 14-year-old Emmett Till was tortured, shot and tossed into a Mississippi river with a cotton gin motor around his neck. They said it again in 1963, when a Ku Klux Klan bomb tore through a Birmingham church, killing four black girls on a Sunday morning.
Yes, those crimes helped galvanize the civil rights movement and pave the way for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. But challenges to Jim Crow also prompted states such as South Carolina to hoist the Confederate battle flag atop their capitol domes in defiance, said James C. Cobb, a professor of history at the University of Georgia.
Outside business investments across the region may influence how some Southern leaders see old symbols now. After the flags came down at his order, Bentley announced a new Google facility in Alabama and commented that a flag was “not worth a job.”
Demographic shifts also have brought change. A century ago, virtually all Southerners were born, lived and died in the same state. By 2010, only 56 percent of the 115 million people living in the region were born in their state of residence.
Across the South, many elected offices are now held by blacks.
In addition, said Thompson, younger Southerners often see things differently. “I don’t think the younger generation has been spoon-fed the ‘Lost Cause’ narrative the same way people even of my generation were,” she said.
But people such as Mike Williams, state adjutant of the Alabama division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, remain unpersuaded. “The Confederacy is going to live on,” he said. “The blood is going to live on. Nobody can take that. You can hide it. You can do whatever you want to it.”