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In the days since 9 members of the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina were brutally murdered by white supremacist Dylan Roof, many of us have been overwhelmed with feelings of grief, anger, and frustration. After the shooting, several of us at Seven Scribes shared our reactions in a series of Letters After Charleston. Now, we share some responses from our readers, in the hopes that Seven Scribes can be a place for community conversation and healing.
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When the last Confederate flag is pulled down from its lofty perch atop a Southern capitol building, the Emanuel 9 will not rise from the dead. We know this. Yet, the call for the removal of the Confederate flag has dominated the reaction to the June 17, 2015, massacre of the nine Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church members. Americans have since engaged in debates around whether the flag represents the hatred of alleged killer Dylan Roof or genteel Southern heritage.
And none of it actually matters.
The clamor to take down the Confederate flag across the South has little to do with the Emanuel 9. It is rather a reactionary move to assuage the national conscience. I pondered the sudden push to re-evaluate the flag’s meaning. Surely, I thought, the flag meant the same the day before the attacks as it did the day afterward.
On October 14, 2014, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley indicated in a gubernatorial debate that she did not believe the Confederate flag should stop flying—business owners weren’t offended by it. Apparently commerce was her rubric for racism. As is her right, Governor Haley changed her mind after the shooting at Mother Emanuel. She was the first public official on June 22 to call for its removal. A stampede of politicians have followed her lead, as well as businesses like Walmart, Target, Etsy, Amazon, and Apple.
All this jockeying to be right happened because it is politically expedient. Officials cannot in good conscience find a defense for flying a flag associated with the suspect of a massacre. The reactive move for change is nothing new. In fact, the reactions to the Emanuel 9 tragedy mirror the history of Black martyrdom spurring White American justice.
White people have historically demanded our blood for their patronage.
In large part, the Civil Rights Movement consisted of Black activists pushing for legislation to combat the legal arms of White supremacy in the United States. But it also consisted of Black people giving their bodies to be broken, burned, and bruised, in public, striking the conscience of White people to move the cause of freedom. Justice required martyrdom. Racism thrived in the dark, under cover of secrecy. White people could ignore racism as long as they did not have to see its gore on television. They could stall attempts at integration, telling Black people it was too soon. But we do not easily forget iconic images of dogs attacking marchers, of the tear-gassed body of Amelia Boynton Robinson, of fire hoses aimed to extinguish people.
It is in this context that I see the feverish race to remove the Confederate flag from high and holy places in the South. The flag should have been taken down years ago. Black people have long made known our fear and distaste for symbols of the Confederacy. But our voices, plaintive or angry, have never been enough. White people have historically demanded our blood for their patronage.
Perhaps what is most grievous about this pattern of reactionary redress is the fear that White Americans will never willingly fulfill America’s promise of “justice for all.” Too many White Americans must see their own violence enacted on Black bodies before they believe inequity. And Black people must die by 1,000 cuts until one death blow awakens the national White conscience. This is how justice has always been handed down to Black folk in the US: slowly, painstakingly, tardily, and with the smug self-congratulations of White people who think they are doing Black people a favor by giving us a fraction of restorative justice. And it will ever be so, as long as we look to them in supplication.
Even if another state never flies the Confederate flag, the change the Emanuel 9 posthumously wrought will never equal the value of their beautiful Black lives. We must work, with everything we are, for an America where we no longer must exchange martyrdom for cheap change.
–Dara Mathis
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I remember the transition chiefly because I could hear my loose change jingle and bounce around the change holder in my car. The vehicle had abruptly turned into a giant broken massage chair as my friend and I snaked down a thin line of a gravel road. We crept down the road towards a small town called Blackjack, Georgia.
I’m taking my time in the fog because visibility is low, but there is one thing I can clearly see: Stars and Bars. It’s interesting because, I was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where that flag is literally everywhere; as in you literally see it as much as the American flag, if not more. I didn’t even know what it was called until I was much older. It was just this thing– a listless, disembodied personification of that weird feeling you get in your stomach when your mom calls you by your full name. In seeing those flags in the fog, seemingly floating in space, proclaiming their enduring message, I was reminded just how accustomed I had become to the symbol, and how uncomfortable I was with the meaning, despite my familiarity.
I was just taking a friend home after prom, but we both knew anything was liable to happen. Looking back on it now, especially given that my car broke down in the middle of that same foggy night, I don’t know how I got us both in potentially the stupidest and most dangerous situation of our lives. We should have just stayed at my house. The Rebel Flag told us that we should have, and it was now the Rebel Flag that was reminding us precisely why. Pickup trucks covered with racist bumper stickers and symbols passed us up in a very Samaritan fashion until a police car quietly inched up behind the vehicle.
“Ya’ll havin’ car trouble?” she said with a smile. I let her know there was no way my iPhone 3GS had service and she let me call my aunt to pick us up. I’m not sure if the blur is the result of my memory or not, but flashes of red and blue followed us all night.
I’m telling this story simply to help you understand how I, a now 23-year-old young black man, see the Confederate Flag. I see it both literally and metaphorically as a racist symbol in the fog of Blackjack, GA. And this symbolism extends beyond the borders of Georgia, as the entire southern half of the United States is peppered with racist memorabilia. My thoughts on the Confederate flag are simple: it symbolizes racism, anarchy, and failure, and should be regarded as such. The symbol itself belongs nowhere but in a museum, where it can truly be understood in context. And by “nowhere but” I mean in not one U.S. capital, not one public office, and all southern flags bearing the likeness of it need be redesigned. If we’re going to stamp it out, let’s stamp it out.
-Justin Smith
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I work at a non-profit, whose mission I believe in, with smart, well-intentioned, passionate people. We serve children in under-resourced, underserved communities, communities made up of black and brown faces who, all too often in recent days, months, and years, have been fatigued by violence. I left work last Wednesday evening annoyed by normal work stuff, only to be sucker punched by a massacre of black people in a place that should be a refuge from the quotidian trials of life. I began processing this latest assault the way I have learned to, by reading about what happened. Twitter again became a place for public mourning, grieving, and a few moments of joy inside my tears. A few hours later, Facebook learned of the murders. I cried some mixture of personal and communal tears unsure where my personal bad day ended and this nightmare began. Fully aware that this loss felt like it hit closer to home because for so many black people church is home.
At work the next morning, the silence was deafening. The hardest thing to stomach was people going about their days as if all was well in the world. It wasn’t. I had the added misfortune of being in Oakland at the end of their championship run. I wanted to be happy, but I couldn’t.
Last Thursday, against my better judgment, I watched the President’s speech, an iteration of speeches he’s given too often and thought I could contain myself. I couldn’t. A younger colleague came over to thank me for a birthday card I gave her and saw the beginning of tears. I went home after lunch, fatigued by trying to appear normal despite the sickening fear that the climate of hatred we’re in is the new normal. The next day was not only the Warriors’ championship parade, but a mandatory team fun day at which I had to make an appearance.
This loss felt like it hit closer to home because for so many black people church is home.
It’s hard being the only black person in a predominantly white space sometimes. I did it for much of my life with little friction, but in this period of American history it’s harder. I wish my colleagues had said something. Something at all. Something that made me believe that they understand or are at least cognizant of the reality of black people in America in 2015. I’m hard-pressed to believe that you can serve people without knowing or caring about the context that colors their lives.
I finally confided in my manager as I let her know I was taking the afternoon off and she listened. She acknowledged the shittiness of the situation and said she understood why the past few days had been less than stellar for me. She looked as if she was at a loss for words, rightfully so, and asked what I would want to hear. I paused.
I wasn’t going to tell her about the countless Wednesday night services that I attended when I was younger or how this later murder hurts because I can imagine me, myself, or my family and friends in that service or how this past year has been a barrage of names and pleas for black lives to matter. I just told her I wanted people to acknowledge the enormous wrong that took place not across the ocean, but in our country. I just wanted people at a minimum to acknowledge what happened. I’m still waiting.
-Kaylé D. Barnes
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I don’t remember a period of my life in which I have been this terrified. It feels as if every time I check my tumblr dashboard someone else has become a hashtag. I wake up and more dead or abused Black bodies are my screen. I never thought Trayvon Martin would be the end of racist violence, but I could never have foreseen that this it would lead to the worse years Black America has seen in a very long time. And with the news of the Charleston shooting I can honestly say this has been the bloodiest period of my young Black life. The thing that terrifies me even more is that it’s become more and more blatant. We now have white men just walking into our churches, ending our lives in groups, and still receiving headlines about what quiet young men they were and how many Black friends they had. My mind is still trying to process what is happening in this country and where we are headed.
Though we often regard police brutality as the modern day lynching, which is a totally valid comparison, actual lynching and its legacy has not left us. This very year a 54 year old man name Otis Byrd was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi. May we never forget James Byrd Jr. who in 1998 was beaten, chained to the back of truck by white supremacists, and dragged for 3 miles. Or Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chanting about lynching earlier this year. In August of 2014, a 17 year old Lennon Lacy was found hanging from a tree in North Carolina. In April of this year a Duke student admitted to hanging a noose from a tree outside of a student center. Also this year, Robert Tomanovich placed a Confederate flag and two nooses outside of his business. He refused to apologize and said that the did it to “honor” a friend who hung himself, which is, of course, absurd.
Though we often regard police brutality as the modern day lynching, which is a totally valid comparison, actual lynching and its legacy has not left us.
Black Americans have reached a point in which we are literally afraid to walk down the street. Where our five year olds have to play dead to stay alive. We can’t even feel safe in our own homes because we turn on TV and see our selves and our cultures routinely mocked and exploited. We don’t feel safe anywhere. We don’t feel safe around Non Black Americans. We don’t even feel safe from the state charged to protect us. This is a state of emergency.
-Shanice Brim
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I am a native son of South Carolina. I love this place. My mother and father were born here and were raised on this soil. My brother and I have traversed every nook and cranny of this state: the mountains of the upstate and the beaches of the low country. But South Carolina is stained by an ugly and brutal past which the aesthetic beauty of this place cannot hide.
If you listen with intent, you can still hear the Friendship Nine calling for freedom and liberty. But you have to listen. If you listen just enough, you can hear Strom Thurmond’s Carolina drawl, spitting the language of segregation. South Carolina has forever been in the business of oppressing black voices and bodies. The shooting at Emanuel AME was an act of terrorism. But nothing about that night is novel. And the state of South Carolina must own up to this. The state has to come to terms with its white supremacist heritage and its unending violence against black bodies, and own it the way it does its “southern charm. South Carolina, if monuments and symbols are any indication, never really stopped being a Confederate state. The confederate flag, the symbol of American sedition, accompanies a memorial to Confederate soldiers who fought to maintain slavery as law.
Nine beautiful and amazing souls were killed in one of the most important black churches in our history—the site of freedom dreams for thousands of blacks in the state—under the purview of a Confederate heritage the state refuses to let die. South Carolina seceded from the Union because it did not want to stop owning, brutalizing and raping black bodies. It is that simple. South Carolina wanted impunity for its treatment of black bodies as profit.
South Carolina, if monuments and symbols are any indication, never really stopped being a Confederate state.
The flag is a triggering symbol of dehumanization for the black people, like me, who are faced with it everyday. White supremacists burned schools, homes and churches for that flag. They lynched, maimed and drowned bodies for that flag. They sent their children off to separate schools and worked to maintain one of the most vicious racial castes in the world for that flag. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Rev. Depayne Middleton Doctor, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr., and Myra Thompson are all dead because of that flag.
Lindsey Graham, nor Nikki Haley, nor Mark Sanford, nor any other white person can instruct me, a black man from Greenville County, on the pain I feel when I am constantly reminded of that flag’s symbolism. But for me, it is a painful and brutalizing reminder of how far we have not come. Its removal alone will not topple the ideology that allows black bodies to be brutalized in every way imaginable. But the removal of this viciously racist symbol will remind the world that South Carolina wants to move beyond its terrible past.
-Ricky B. Pulley, Jr.
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