Urban Thought Collective

Recently on the campus of the University of Alabama, members of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority were meeting to celebrate their anniversary when, lo and behold, a white fraternity’s parade stopped in front of their house. The frat boys were wearing Confederate uniforms and carrying the Confederate battle flag. It was part of their “Old South” parade and they had stopped to pick up some of their dates, young women from a white sorority next door to the AKA’s, who appeared in plantation-era hoop skirts and bonnets.

The sistahs of AKA were, understandably, shocked. They sent a petition complaining about the whole incident to the president of the school. The members of the white fraternity, Kappa Alpha, which was founded in 1865 at Washington and Lee University and feels that General Robert E. Lee (yes, him) is their spiritual founder, have apologized to the women of AKA. To date, no action has been taken against the fraternity.

I was at a southern university several years ago when a white fraternity put up a bunch of flyers advertising their upcoming “Lynchburg Bash.” The party was in “honor” of the home of Jack Daniels Whiskey (Lynchburg, Tennessee) and the flyer had a drawing of a barrel of whiskey and a hangman’s noose.

Needless to say, some of us Black folks was a wee bit offended.

Without going into all of the ensuing student council meetings, resolutions and cuss-outs that occurred, the heart of the matter then and today was that the drawing of a noose (not to mention the word ‘lynch’) is deeply troubling, offensive and disrespectful to the psyche and history of Afrikan people in this country.

There have been several noose sightings in the last couple of years but there has also been much-needed, interracial, public dialogue about the history and meaning behind this horrid symbol.

So, that’s a good sign.

Now if we could just get the folks who believe in celebrating the Confederacy to stop lying and to cease and desist, then I’d really sing “Oh Happy Day.”

The Confederacy: the states that seceded from the United States of America (the Union) and formed their own nation (the Confederate States of America) after Abraham Lincoln was elected president which led to the Civil War because the Confederate states felt that Lincoln would (among other things) abolish slavery – you remember them, don’t you?
April is known as Confederate Heritage Month and is a legal holiday in many states of the south, hence the parade at the University of Alabama.

Most white southerners who support Confederate Heritage Month will say that it’s merely about “southern pride,” remembering the soldiers who fought to preserve their way of life from the threat of domination by an evil power.

I can dig that.

There’s just one small, itty, bitty nagging problem though: the way of life that the South wants to honor was built on the dehumanization and exploitation of my people.

And not just the enslavement of Black people for economic gain, but hand-in-hand with that was the psycho-socio-cultural paradigm that had to be maintained in order for the economic exploitation to be successful, during enslavement and after freedom from chattel slavery came; chain gangs; sharecropping; vagrancy laws; Jim Crow laws; Black Codes; the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, up to and including the rise of the Dixiecrats and the fight to keep segregation during the Civil Rights Movement.

All of these things and more were part and parcel of the “Southern way of life.” Lynchings and other forms of violence were the force that white racist Southerners used to preserve it.

To leave out this ugly and disfigured truth when talking about “Southern pride” is to be in denial at best and lying at worst.

Ugly and disfigured; like how Emmitt Till looked when they shipped his body back to Chicago from Mississippi.

I don’t have anything against parties or celebrations, parades or state holidays. What I do have a problem with is the celebration of oppression and the longing for a “return to the good old days” that usually comes with this particular celebration of the South’s “way of life.”

If that’s how Southerners really want to roll they should just say so and stop lying.

Until they do, we will continue to be at odds over this issue.

But hopefully, more Black folks like the sistahs of AKA will make their displeasure known and request that this madness stops when it rears its ugly and disfigured head.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a community activist and journalist. She can be heard most Thursdays on “Some of Us Are Brave: A Black Women’s Radio Program” on KPFK – Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. She is also the Director of the Ida B. Wells Institute, a leadership development and media training program for Black women and girls. Her social commentary blog is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.