A Confederacy of Racists

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says the flag is “part of who we are.” He's right. A big part. 

Memo to neo-confederates Dylann Roof, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Mark Sanford, League of the South,, Judge Gosnell, Strom Thurmond (deceased) and others.

Just a reminder that the slaveocracy, secessionist Confederacy, whose flag and racist ideology you proudly defend, LOST the Civil War that began in your state in 1861. BTW, there's a reason we don't have the nazi swastika flying over the White House.

The defeat resulted in the emancipation of nearly 4 million slaves, 400,000 of whom who lived in South Carolina. With it came the decimation of the KKK and the mass arrest of its members by Pres. Grant in order to protect the lives of the freed former slaves. The Reconstruction period that followed was a time of great reforms, ie. the founding of the first real public school system and blacks allowed to vote and hold public office and great struggle for freedom and equality.

The  reason the confederate battle flag now flies over your state capitol in Columbia is because your predecessors were able to make a comeback -- a counter revolution -- and violently overthrow Reconstruction (the most democratic period in your history) after the removal of federal soldiers from the South and the return of complete control of the region to the racist Southern Democrats (now called Republicans).

That bloody flag still flies because a big chunk of S.C.'s black population, once the majority in the state, fled South Carolina's systemic Jim Crow terrorism and apartheid segregation and came north during the great migration, thereby strengthening the hold of your white majority.

Racist Roof

Then there's the ongoing denial of voting rights to many of your black citizens. Gov. Haley's statement that, "Not a single CEO" has complained about the flag further illustrates who she sees as her constituency and where the power in the state now lies.

African Americans and progressives have long complained about the state's practice of flying a Confederate flag over the Capitol dome, a tradition that began in 1962 as a show of defiance against the civil rights movement and federal desegregation efforts.

Before his act of racist terrorism, Dylann Roof was photographed displaying the confederate flag along with other symbols of murderous racism, the flag of the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa.

Now in the wake of killings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on Wednesday night, it's time for that flag to come down. Your defense of the last symbol of a defeated confederacy means the blood of Dylann Roof's murderous rampage, is also on your hands.

It will come down.