Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

 

The grey riders are gone, but yet they remain. Asleep in our soil, and alive in our veins. Untouched by fire, untouched by frost, they whisper within us, “Our cause is not lost.”
–Unknown

On Friday, 10 June 2015, after a series of vitriolic, angry and hate-filled rallies, a press conference from South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, a legislative coup d’état comprising an overwhelming majority of the General Assembly and the stroke of the governor’s pen, the Confederate Battle Flag was removed from its place of honour at the Confederate Soldiers’ Monument on the SC Statehouse grounds.

It had been placed there a decade and a half earlier by the SC General assembly as a “compromise” that removed a similar flag from the dome of the SC Statehouse where it had flown since the Centennial Observance of the War Between the States in the 1960s.

The ambivalence of the meaning of the earlier display on the dome was certainly open to interpretation. It could even be argued that its meaning was unclear, especially to our neighbours and friends of African descent. However, this unfortunate situation was remedied in 2000 by placing a historically accurate flag at a historically significant monument. At that very moment, the new flag became unequivocally linked to the South Carolina soldiers of the 1860s and unequivocally severed from its perceived ties to legislative opposition to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.

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