The man who committed these executions, Dylann Storm Roof is an avowed white supremacist. It is clear from his “manifesto” that he was committed to the violent resolution of what he believed to be the right of white people to regain dominion over, even to exterminate, Black people. He decided that igniting a “race war” would create the perfect storm that would allow for the dominance of white supremacists. Engaging in an act of domestic terrorism/hate crime/mass murder, he slaughtered nine innocent people as they prayed - targeted because they were Black.
Numerous photos have emerged of the killer waving, exalting and idolizing a flag - the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, also known as the Confederate Flag. The very same flag that flew full mast on the SC Capitol grounds the day after the murders. This is a flag that continues to be strenuously defended and protected by many, overwhelmingly, white people who claim that it is a symbol of their heritage and Southern Pride. It is also a flag that is used as a symbol of white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-nazis, skinheads, white nationalists, etc. who actively embody the racist history of the flag’s legacy.
This particular battle flag was designed by William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, who ironically enough, at one time served as the Mayor of Charleston. He also served in the U.S. House of Representatives prior to South Carolina’s secession from the Union. Miles was an extremist on the issue of slavery and advocated for the continuation of the slave trade. His beliefs on slavery were so absolute that he was known as a “fire-eater”. He believed that “liberty was an acquired privilege”, that some (white) men were born with the innate ability to earn liberty, while others, (non-white) were not. He vehemently rejected the idea of any sort of compromise on the issue of slavery and responded to all proposed attempts to restrict or end its practice with calls for Southern secession from the Union.
William Mile’s design was initially created for consideration as the flag of the newly formed Confederacy, but it was rejected in favor of the Stars and Bars. This flag was flown in battle just once, at Manassas, Virginia (also known as the first battle of Bull Run) in 1861. A confusion in identifying the Confederate national flag from the Union’s led to Confederate forces mistakenly firing on one of their own brigades. After the battle General Pierre G.T. Beauregard of the Confederate Army of the Potomac and General Joseph E. Johnston of the Confederate Army of the Shenandoah determined that a more easily identifiable flag must be utilized to prevent further battlefield mishaps. General Beauregard consulted with his then aide-de-camp who happened to be William Porcher Miles. After reviewing Mile’s design Generals Beauregard and Johnston made the decision to utilize it for the field of battle.
The flag was first presented in ceremonies to General Robert E. Lee’s newly reorganized Army of Northern Virginia in Centerville and Manassas, Virginia. General Beauregard exhorted the troops to treat this new flag with honor and to never surrender it. From here this battle flag would continue to rise in popularity and become one of the most recognized flags of the Confederacy.
In 1863 this battle flag would be incorporated at the behest of William Miles into the second national flag of the Confederacy known as the Stainless Banner. His flag design was placed in the upper left hand corner on a field of bright white. The flag would become better known by its nickname, “a white man’s flag”. This flag would later be edited in 1865 because when not unfurled in the breeze it appeared to be one of truce or surrender. Major Arthur L. Rogers suggested that a large vertical red stripe be added to the end on the right side of the flag. Thus a third national flag known as the Bloodstained Banner was created.
In 1863 the Savannah Morning News published an editorial lauding the Stainless Banner aka the “white man’s flag”. William T. Thompson the paper’s editor stated, “As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven Ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race.”
In 1962 the South Carolina legislative body, all white, voted to place the original battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia atop the Capitol dome. Ostensively it was placed there in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War and the state’s role in the war. Others saw the flag’s placement as an act of defiance toward the heated struggle for Civil Rights by Black Americans.
In 1999, a large coalition led by the NAACP called for conventions, entertainers, vacationers, sporting events, etc.to boycott South Carolina. In 2000 over 50,000 people marched on the South Carolina Capitol calling for the flag’s removal. This resulted in a compromise during the 2000 legislative session that provided for the flag’s removal from the dome to a site on the Capitol grounds. This session also saw the passage of the Heritage Act as a means to further protect any future efforts to remove, relocate or rename any historically (Confederate) named street, park or other public space and symbols. And especially protected in this Act is the battle flag’s place on the Capitol grounds, providing specifics that include an iron fence and a padlock to protect its location. This same session also saw the establishment of an official Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. South Carolina was the last state in the country to set this observance.
The Civil War has been heavily romanticized, its brutal origins glossed over and revised to make it more palatable. But at its roots, in the DNA of its marrow, lies these facts regarding the heritage of the Confederacy: On December 20, 1860 - South Carolina seceded from the Union. On April 12, 1861, within weeks of the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, an act of treasonous war against the United Sates of America was committed by Confederate forces at Charleston Harbor. Under the command of General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, Ft. Sumter was attacked, signaling the beginning of a bloody war that would last four years and claim a total of 620,000 lives.
Absolutely. The war was about economics and state’s rights. Specifically the economic prosperity gained by the use of slave labor and the right of states to continue to engage in slavery and the slave trade. The heritage of the flag that flies on the South Carolina Capitol grounds, includes a history of white men violently ascertaining their superiority over Black people to hold them in captivity and forced servitude, a superiority that they defended through Biblical scripture. This heritage includes the kidnapping of an estimated 20 million Africans via the Atlantic Slave Trade. It is a heritage that includes the tightly packed and chained bodies of Black people in the filthy holds of ships to lie in their excrement for up to two months at a time. It is a heritage that stripped Black people of their clothing and dignity, setting them upon auction blocks to be poked and prodded like so much cattle. The heritage fought so valiantly for under this flag includes rape, torture, beatings, murder, and forced breeding to create new “stock”. It is a heritage that thought nothing of splitting up families as punishment or for profit.
The heritage of this battle flag includes post-war atrocities as the South ardently sought to find new ways to maintain its dominance over the bodies of Black people. Jim Crow laws were used to disenfranchise Black people from access to voting, property ownership, education, housing, health care, amassing wealth, etc.
Convict leasing replaced slavery and became the basis for a penal labor system that wantonly incarcerated Black bodies in order to rent them for profit. The Ku Klux Klan, flying this flag, emerged as the violent enforcement arm of Jim Crow. The very first anti-terrorist laws enacted in this country were a direct response to the brutal actions of the Ku Klux Klan.
This is the heritage that lay at the heart of countless acts of domestic terrorism as night riders burned homes and lynched Black people at will. Black communities were terrorized by violent white mob driven riots, New York City, Atlanta, Knoxville, Tulsa, Washington D.C., Chicago, Elaine, and E. St. Louis. Some towns such as Rosewood and Greenwood were completely burned to the ground. Thousands of Black people were murdered and injured, left homeless and penniless during these riots.
The legacy of terror continued with the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, the Crisis at Central High in Little Rock, the assault on the bodies of Freedom Riders and those who sat at lunch counters, the murder of Medgar Evers, the murder by bombing of four little girls - Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins in a church in Birmingham, the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi - James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, the violence of Bloody Sunday during the march from Selma to Montgomery and the murder of Viola Liuzzo.
All of the heritage of the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virgina - Dlyann Storm Roof embraced as his own. This was his banner when he decided to commit unspeakable violence on the bodies of nine Americans, because they were Black.
There is no room for a defense of this flag’s continued placement on the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. It is naught but lip service for the Governor and the legislative body to express sorrow and prayers, but refuse to call for the flag’s removal.
It is time for South Carolina to own its bloody heritage that helped to form Dylann Storm Roof. Now is the time for an act of courage that refuses to embrace the misguided Confederate sentimentality and imagined supremacy that gnaws on the ancestral bones of slaves and their descendants. Now is the time to prove the depths of sorrow and the desire for healing and reconciliation. Removing the Battle Flag from the Capitol grounds is a good first step.
