Loose Leaf Notes

Every town is a microcosm of the whole world. If we stay where we are and invest in our own community, the whole world eventually comes to us. – From Homegrown, the 2005 essay that I read on the air at WVTF Public Radio in 2005

The man in the photo, carrying the Confederate flag, is an outside agitator. He came to our small Floyd, Virginia mountain town to disrupt a peaceful vigil that Floyd Countians organized “to grieve the lives lost to racialized violence and say their names.”

He paced up and down, outside the vigil perimeter, in front of our county courthouse where around 200 people were demonstrating. Towards the end of the vigil, after some words were exchanged, he put down his flag, took off his shirt, rushed toward vigil attendees and threatened them, pushing and slapping two attendees.  He was escorted away by sheriffs (and unidentified others in uniform). It’s been reported that he was charged with simple assault.

My husband snapped the picture as he drove past the site on his way home from dropping our grand kids back home. Neither of us attended the vigil, but many of our friends did. I read the Facebook posts and newspaper stories about it and watched a video that my friend Mara recorded and posted.

She wrote, “The crowd that gathered was diverse in age, race, gender and background … The demonstration featured an 8 minute and 46 second period of silence in honor of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who was murdered on camera by police a month ago. Floyd’s murder has sparked bitter debate and nationwide protests…”

Most of the news stories I read used a picture like the one posted here to show the conflict, but the vigil was so much more than that. There was a coming together with speakers that included a black business owner, a clergy, last year’s high school valedictorian (African American El Salvadorian), parents and more. There were songs, chants, a calling out of names while taking a knee for those 8 minutes 45 seconds that the policeman held his knee on George Floyd’s neck while he pleaded for his life.

My friend Lora posted this: “The most heart-warming story was of the 12-year-old black girl who stood in front of a gathering of 200 people and told them that she was afraid at school. She was bold. As a student, she properly talked to her mother for support then, confronted the boy with the confederate flag, and her teacher, to no avail. Her voice was not heard until yesterday. THAT’s why we came together as we did. “HER LIFE MATTERS!” HER SAFETY MATTERS”! And, then, and then! A little 7-year-old white girl, accompanied by her mother, gifted the young black girl with her poster. “Blak is Beautiful” with shiny gold trim. That was when my heart busted open, tears streamed! The tenderness of a young open heart, not tainted by hate, not conditioned to discriminate against color, open, innocent and compassionate. We need the media to cover stories of LOVE as well! There are many ways and paths to end racism. I want to share the stories of these children.”

There is a confederate statue in front of our courthouse. My friend Seth spoke for many of us when he posted: “So, I had mixed feelings for years on this debate about removing this outdated statue in front of the Floyd courthouse. Of course, it has stood there my entire life in Floyd so in a way it felt like it was part of the downtown and I looked past it… But this evening as our lovely community came together to have a vigil in respect for the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd in a completely peaceful and respectful protest, I witnessed something I hope to never see again. Trucks with rebel flags and counter-protesters are one thing, but when I hear people shout “go home ngrs” to the very nice people in the vigil in my lovely and diverse community, that was it. Their heritage is clearly hate and I personally cannot wait to see their monument taken away forever…”

I remember being taken back when I first came to Floyd 34 years ago and saw that Confederate statue, but more than that, I was horrified that there was a Klu Klux Klan (defined by the Mirriam Webster dictionary as a post-Civil War American secret society advocating white supremacy) march through town not long after I moved here.

I got used to the statue, as Seth did, and accepted it to some degree because it was a tribute to unknown soldiers (vets who don’t start the wars). I later learned that enthusiasm for the Civil War was weakest in Virginia’s mountains and that a study by historian Rand Dotson found that “23 percent of Floyd County soldiers quit the rebels and returned home, where they were “welcomed and assisted by Floyd’s actively disloyal Unionist residents, who openly encouraged further desertion, provided food and protection for local deserters, and sometimes even hired the county’s runaway soldiers as day laborers.” (Roanoke Times).  I respected that. They did not own slaves. It was not their war. They came back to take care of their families.

I also learned that the erection of Confederate statues was the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and that they were erected during the Jim Crow segregation era, well after the Civil War and up to the 1950s, even in Baltimore, Maryland, where nearly three times as many Marylanders fought for the Union as for the Confederacy. Even Robert E. Lee was against the public display of Confederate statues and considered the idea of them as open wounds.

Another project of the UDC was the promotion of school history textbooks that romanticized slavery with lines like “slaves in the South were faithful to their owners, who were caring and gentle people.” (Wikipedia). Until recent decades, the UDC was also involved in building monuments to commemorate the KKK.

There was a handful of what I assume were counter-protesters across the street from the vigil.  I assume some of them would say they support the Confederate statue and flag because it is their heritage. All I can say to that is that it’s hard to buy the argument that the confederate flag is a symbol of heritage when it’s been used and continues to be flown and flaunted by white supremacists and neo-nazis.

My father, and maybe yours, fought in WWII to rid the world of that kind of scourge.