Dear Editor:
Sunday's front page article "Scores rally round Confederate battle flag" could have been entitled, "A Lighthearted Look at Celebrating a Flag that stood for Enslavement, and, post Civil-war, Oppression of Black Americans." Maybe these people really don't feel hate in their hearts. Maybe they're "just" in denial about what the flag symbolizes. Maybe they're "just" oblivious to black Americans. Maybe they don't consider how hateful and oppressive it may be for the descendants of slaves, to see people enjoying their Sunday afternoon with a romp around the flag that stood for their slavery in the 1860s, and was furled again in the South in response to Civil Rights, in the 1960s.
To add insult to injury, to have the local paper report it as though it's perfectly acceptable leisure activity. These people's celebration of the Confederate flag is akin to, say if skinheads in Germany were to rally in support of the Nazi flag. In fact, after WWII, the Allies forbade Germans from flying the Nazi flag, so neo-Nazis in that country use the Confederate flag as their symbol. These Nazis could say, it's not about hate, it's about the bravery of my ancestors - who, like the Confederates, fought for a cause that included slavery, murder, and rape of another group of human beings.
So called "state's rights" were in fact about the right to enslave black people. The Confederate economy, the South's way of life, was dependent on free slave labor. It's true that a small percentage of white Southerners owned slaves, but the whites who couldn't afford slaves benefited enormously.
In 1860, John Townsend owner of a cotton plantation, said, in the South, "... the poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color. He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste ..." From "Why Non-Slaveholding Southerner Fought" by Gordon Rhea, a historian whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
Peace. An unapologetic white liberal in Jeff City.