During the final year of the [Civil] war, the Confederate command in ... [Charleston, South Carolina] had converted the planter's Race Course (horse-racing track) into a prison. Union soldiers were kept in terrible conditions in the interior of the track, without tents or other coverings. At least 257 died from exposure and disease and were hastily buried without coffins in unmarked graves behind the former judge's stand. After the fall of the city, Charleston's blacks, many of whom had witnessed the sufferings at the horse-track prision, insisted on a proper burial of the Union dead. The symbolic power of the planter aristocracy's Race Course (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. ... [B]lacks planned a May Day ceremony that a New York Tribune correspondent called "a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before."
The "First Decoration Day," as this event came to be recognized in some circles in the North, involved an estimated ten thousand people, most of them black former slaves.... At nine o'clock in the morning on May 1, the procession to this special cemetery began as three thousand black schoolchildren (newly enrolled in freedmen's schools) marched around the Race Course, each with an armload of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." The children were followed by three hundred black women representing the Patriotic Association, a group organized to distribute clothing and other goods among the freedpeople. The women carried baskets of flowers, wreaths, and crosses to the burial ground. The Mutual Aid Society, a benevolent association of black men, next marched in cadence around the track and into the cemetery, followed by large crowds of white and black citizens. All dropped their spring blossoms on the graves in a scene recorded by a newspaper correspondent: "when all had left, the holy mounds--the tops, the sides, and the spaces between them--were a mass of flowers, not a speck of earth could be seen; and as the breeze wafted the sweet perfumes from them, outside and beyond... there were few eyes among those who knew the meaning of the ceremony that were not dim with tears of joy." While the adults marched around the graves, the children were gathered in a nearby grove, where they sang "America," "We'll Rally around the Flag," and "The Star Spangled Banner."
The official dedication ceremony was conducted by the ministers of all the black churches in Charleston. With prayers, the reading of biblical passages, and the singing of spirituals, black Charlestonians gave birth to an American tradition. In so doing, they declared the meaning of the war in the most public way possible--by their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of roses, lilacs, and marching feet on the old planter's Race Course....
After the dedication, the crowds gathered at the Race Course grandstand to hear some thirty speeches by Union officers, local black ministers, and abolitionist missionaries.... Picnics ensued around the grounds, and in the afternoon, a full brigade of Union infantry, including the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts and Thirty-fifth and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, marched in double column around the martyr's graves and held a drill on the infield of the Race Course. The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. But the struggle to own the meaning of Memorial Day in particular, and of Civil War memory in general, had only begun.
I am writing as one who has lived among you in America only a little more than ten years. And I am writing seriously and warningly. Many readers may ask: "What right has he to speak about things which concern us alone, and which no newcomer should touch?"
I do not think such a standpoint is justified. One who has grown up in an environment takes much for granted. On the other hand, one who has come to this country as a mature person may have a keen eye for everything peculiar and characteristic. I believe he should speak out freely on what he sees and feels, for by so doing he may perhaps prove himself useful.
What soon makes the new arrival devoted to this country is the democratic trait among the people. I am not thinking here so much of the democratic political constitution of this country, however highly it must be praised. I am thinking of the relationship between individual people and of the attitude they maintain toward one another.
In the United States everyone feels assured of his worth as an individual. No one humbles himself before another person or class. Even the great difference in wealth, the superior power of a few, cannot undermine this healthy self-confidence and natural respect for the dignity of one's fellow-man.
There is, however, a somber point in the social outlook of Americans. Their sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious; but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the "Whites" toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.
Many a sincere person will answer: "Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavorable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability."
I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.
The ancient Greeks also had slaves. They were not Negroes but white men who had been taken captive in war. There could be no talk of racial differences. And yet Aristotle, one of the great Greek philosophers, declared slaves inferior beings who were justly subdued and deprived of their liberty. It is clear that he was enmeshed in a traditional prejudice from which, despite his extraordinary intellect, he could not free himself.
A large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition--besides inherited aptitudes and qualities--which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerful influence of tradition is the influence of our conscious thought upon our conduct and convictions.
It would be foolish to despise tradition. But with our growing self-consciousness and increasing intelligence we must begin to control tradition and assume a critical attitude toward it, if human relations are ever to change for the better. We must try to recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity--and shape our lives accordingly.
I believe that whoever tries to think things through honestly will soon recognize how unworthy and even fatal is the traditional bias against Negroes.
What, however, can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed, and must watch lest his children become influenced by this racial bias.
I do not believe there is a way in which this deeply entrenched evil can be quickly healed. But until this goal is reached there is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause.
I return to my native Kansas twice a year, spring and fall. After a flight to Kansas City International Airport, the short drive west across the Missouri River into Kansas often leaves me feeling a little disoriented. The landscape and the culture have changed abruptly with no proper preparation. Words from the dust jacket of William Least Heat-Moon's book, PrairyErth, often come to my mind, "Most American readers know three things about Kansas: it is flat, it has something to do with The Wizard of Oz, and the events of In Cold Blood took place there. Three illusions: the first is a lie, the second a fairy tale, the third a nightmare."
The lie about the landscape is obvious. But the scene is a strange one to Eastern eyes: Trees are much rarer, growing naturally only along streambeds and in low places, which makes the horizon seem as if it stretches to ends of the universe. The world seems like an enormous open place and your insignificance in this vastness seems palpable. In Kansas it is more often the small curiosity rather than the fairy tale or the nightmare that attracts one's attention. The differences between East coast and Midwest culture are among these small curiosities. It takes a three hour drive through a countryside of wheat farms and cattle ranches to arrive in central Kansas. As I approach my hometown on the interstate, roadside signs proudly announce that astronaut Steve Hawley was born in Salina, Kansas. Another curiosity: the East and the Midwest don't even speak the same language. Perhaps an imaginary trip to the supermarket would illustrate this.
As you walk to your car parked at curbside you'll cross a strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, which any native will tell you is called "a parking." At the supermarket things will be pretty much as normal with some exceptions: If you want something sweet to go with your morning coffee, you'll be buying "sweet rolls" and for your cookout you'll buy hamburger and hotdog "buns." If you can't find the soft drinks, ask the clerk where the "pop" is. Finally, when you check out you'll take your purchases home in a "sack" not a bag. Maybe it would be easier just to eat out. Local restaurants serve mostly plain fare: "meat and potatoes" style comfort food. No doubt you'll find everything overcooked. And if you are really adventuresome you may order fish or seafood. Try not to act too surprised when you are served something brown and square with catsup. If the food is boring, perhaps the waitress will be more interesting. Where else would a waitress pull a chair up to your table and explain--without being asked--that she raised her three children as a single mother after her husband was murdered, that one of her sons had succumbed to a childhood illness, and that she had continued to wear her wedding ring for the past thirty years because she didn't want to be "messed with?" After your meal a walk might do you good. My favorite place for these postprandial perambulations is Oakdale Park. This public park has nicely kept beds of brightly colored annuals, a large statuary fountain and a small shelter with vine covered lattice sides, which is the setting for numerous outdoor weddings in June. Nearby is a small butterfly garden and if you follow the park path just a little farther you will come to a little curiosity that keeps me coming back to this place over and over again. It is a simple thing: a plain stone monument placed at the foot of a flagpole. Looking down the stone bears the inscription, "The Flag Our Fathers' Saved, Dedicated to the Memory of Our Fathers by the Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, May 20, 1936." When the eye travels up the gleaming metal flagpole all that is to be seen is the bright blue of a high prairie sky: there is no flag.
It's a sure thing that a flag flew proudly at this spot to commemorate Memorial Day in 1936 and it's almost as sure that on Memorial Day 2002 no flag is flying over this memorial. My initial reaction to this memorial was more personal than just a curiosity inspired, "What happened to the flag?" My great-grandfather is one of the Union veterans being honored and I wondered--still wonder--if his daughters were involved in placing this memorial. As usual I scribbled down a few notes and went away thinking I'd look into this someday. Someday did come and what I learned about the intimate connection between the Civil War and Memorial Day both surprised and shocked me, and it gave the symbol of the missing flag a new and poignantly painful meaning.
The Civil War has probably been memorialized more than any other war our nation has been involved in and with good reason. When it was fought in the 1860's it was the largest war the world had ever seen, and it was monumentally destructive of human life. Deaths on the Union and Confederate side totaled 620,000. This is roughly same number of deaths our nation experienced in all other wars through the Korean conflict. At the war's end the North viewed victory as the culmination of a Second American Revolution: The nation of the Founders was to be reborn and regenerated. This rebirth was realized in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution: The Thirteenth abolished slavery, the Fourteenth provided due process and equal protection of the law to all, and the Fifteenth provided that citizens could not be denied the vote because of race, color or previous condition of servitude. These amendments, collectively known as the Civil War amendments, were added to the Constitution within just five years of the war's end. It's probably worth noting that the next amendment to the Constitution came almost 50 years later, in 1913. It was the amendment that established the income tax.
The struggle to own the meaning of the war and the way in which it was to be remembered began almost as soon as the ink dried at Appomattox. Two views of the war emerged. The emancipationist view was founded in the concepts of the rebirth of the republic and the establishment of African Americans as full citizens with Constitutional equality. African Americans were not interested in official apologies for slavery, their hopes were for protection, education, a helping hand, and most importantly for human recognition. The reconciliationist view was founded on the idea that both the North and the South had behaved honorably--each side had fought valiantly for a worthy cause--and that the most important goal to be achieved was reconciliation between whites in the North and South.
Reconciliation between Southern whites and African Americans was never seen as a possibility and the issues of slavery and rebellion were simply to be swept under the rug of white reunion. Memorial Day became very important in shaping how Americans would remember and come to terms with the Civil War. After the founding of Memorial Day by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, commemoration of the Civil War dead spread from village to village, town to town, and state to state throughout the nation. In the 1870's and 1880's it became an American ritual to decorate the graves of the Civil War dead in the late spring when the flowers were in full bloom. Mostly it was the women in these American communities who were responsible for gathering the flowers and organizing people including large numbers of school children for these rituals. Memorial Day took on both a religious and a political character: it became a way that memory and forgetting of the war was shaped and reshaped in the American national psyche. Decoration Day was often celebrated as a second Independence Day celebration complete with the traditional picnic, and the Decoration Day speech was raised to a fine art-form by politicians, military veterans, and ministers of that era. Slowly through Decoration Day speeches and other opinion forming social mechanisms the reconciliationist view of the Civil War became dominant.
The year 1883 was decisive in the emancipationist-reconciliationist struggle. A variety of legal cases involving the exclusion of African Americans from public accommodations had been pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. When the court finally ruled in the fall of 1883 it said that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to the states and that any person wronged by racial discrimination could seek relief only from state laws and courts. Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenter, said that the entire meaning and content of the Civil War Amendments had been "sacrificed" by this decision. The North had won the war, but the South had won the peace. In effect the Federal government had come down on the side of racism in America. Eventually this led to the passage of Jim Crow laws throughout the South and set our nation on a course of racial discrimination, which has not yet been totally overcome. Frederick Douglass had asked prophetically in 1875, "If war among the whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among whites bring?" The devastating answer to this question had come with the Supreme Court decision of 1883. The war had been brutal and terrible and so was the peace. If victory in the war saved the flag, then the peace left a bare ruined flagpole stripped of the promise of liberty and justice for all.
Well, what does all this history mean for us today? It's true that we cannot change our past; and certainly we have made progress in race relations in the past 140 years. But there are also some enduring aspects to American racism that I would like to explore with you. The African American economist and writer Glenn C. Loury has said that slavery resulted in a social stigma that leads to a withholding of equal humanity for African Americans. And as Einstein has pointed out, we transmit this social stigma from generation to generation. Let me illustrate by a small example how this works in 21st century America.
I am acquainted with a couple that I would characterize as a typical white-collar American family. They are intelligent, have above average educations, and are solidly middle class. They lived in a very nice home in Baltimore County just north of Towson with their three young children. When their children reached school age they were placed in private school because "minorities" had too much influence with teachers and principals in the public schools. Private schools are expensive and they would like the state to provide financial assistance for their children's education. When educational bond issues appeared on the ballot in Baltimore County, they voted against them since their taxes would go up and they would derive no benefit from the improvements being financed. I think that racism is one of the biggest reasons for lack of support of the public school system in America today.
Then there was crime. The light rail system made it possible for criminals to come from Baltimore City to Baltimore County to commit their misdeeds. The areas around light rail stations became hotbeds of criminal activity; it just wasn't safe to live in Baltimore County anymore. Statistics published in The Baltimore Sun failed to support these rumors of increased crime, but The Sun is a "liberal rag" and was covering up the truth of what was really going on. They sold their house and moved to northern Harford County. In the past ten years 150,000 African Americans have moved into Baltimore County seeking nice neighborhoods, good schools, and less crime. Shall we ever learn to live together? One of joys of their new location was swimming at Rocks State Park on hot summer days. Lately these trips have become somewhat less enjoyable they say because the "minorities" have taken to frequenting the park and they are noisy, play loud and annoying music, and they have an "attitude." On the day this couple picked up their brand new car they drove to the park and sure enough the "minorities" were already there. The husband was a little concerned that his new car might be tinkered with, but they stopped anyway and went for their swim. When it was time to leave, his wife and children went to the car while the husband lingered a bit in the water. When he joined them, he immediately checked the car over and discovered that the hood was unlatched. He was sure the "minorities" had tampered with the car while they were swimming and was poised to confront them about it. But before any action was taken, there was a hurried family conference. The discussion had just started when the oldest son admitted that he had been playing around the new car and that he had unlatched the hood.
What should we do? The man and woman I described are not bad people. They work, they care for their children and strive to protect them, and they regularly attend church. But they are blind to their own racism and to the racism of American society. They are participants in what Einstein described as an American tradition: they are unconsciously passing this racial prejudice on to their children. And, I suspect that their blindness to racism and their attitudes toward "minorities" are very much in the mainstream of current American thought.
I think that self-examination about one's own racial prejudice is the place to start. I grew up in '40's and '50's and absorbed a good deal of the common racial prejudice of that era. The best that I can do is to be as aware as possible of these prejudices, to dispute them, and to strive never to verbalize or to act on them. What I cannot do is totally eliminate them. This persistence is what makes the passing of prejudice from generation to generation so damaging. Perhaps we need to restore some of the early religious character of Memorial Day by making it a time for a national examination of conscience about racism. We can only look forward to a time when American children will grow up without this kind of racial bias, but that time is not yet here. Racism is rampant in our society today. If you don't believe this, I invite you to tune-in to some of our more popular talk-radio programs and listen to what is being said. Some of these programs actually seem to encourage hate talk because, I suppose, it sells. People have a legitimate right to express their opinions, but especially on the public airwaves there should be some response, some counterbalance to racist ideas--just airing them with no appropriate response legitimizes these wrongheaded ideas in the minds of many. Disputing racism when you find it is an important step in promoting the healing of what is still a gaping national wound.
My great-grandfather lived far beyond his Civil War experiences. He died sitting in a rocking chair while waiting for his daughter to bring his grandchildren to him. It was May 27, 1908. It was late in the spring; the flowers were in full bloom. And, in a ritual reminiscent of early Decoration Days, mourners at his graveside showered his casket with flowers. Surely he died with a good conscience that he had done his part in saving the flag. Just as surely he could have had no inkling that his victory was to be transformed into our modern struggle against racism, a struggle that would endure beyond his great and great-great grandchildren's time. The struggle to save the flag exists in every era and every generation. Liberty and justice for all are hard-won and they come at a high price. But it is our American struggle, with which we must keep faith. And to realize the promise of America, we must prevail in the quest for freedom for all, or, to paraphrase the refrain from an old hymn: Flag of our fathers, precious flag, we will be true to thee 'til death. May it be so.
Copyright © 2002 Merrill Milham. All Rights Reserved.