WHY MUST THE CONFEDERATE FLAG COME DOWN?

A friend of mine sent me a message the other day asking me the following question: Racism is not cool in my eyes! But I must ask you? As a black man? They have been flying the Confederate flag for years! Why all the sudden are your people mad about it? This was my answer to him: Thank you for asking. "My people" are not "all of a sudden" upset about the confederate flag (also called the rebel flag, the Dixie flag, and the southern cross). The South Carolina incident -- the shooting up members of a black church -- was just the last straw. We (along with MANY whites and Hispanics) have been angered by the flying and image of the confederate flag ever since its inception. Just because that flag has been flying for years does not mean it was right to do so in the first place! What most lovers of that flag fail to realize is that that flag was adopted in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. It was adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. It represented the 11 breakaway (slave) states from the United States of America [* and two states that never officially broke away, yet sided with their cause]: South Carolina Mississippi Florida Alabama Georgia Louisiana Texas Virginia Arkansas Tennessee North Carolina Missouri * West Virginia * The flag represented the southern states' right to maintain slavery, and the raping, whipping, dehumanization, and otherwise humiliation of the black race in this country who were forcibly kidnapped from their homeland, and made to serve the white man in a land they knew nothing about. The flag represented the southern states' defiance in denying freedom for the slaves, and perpetuating hatred and resentment toward a people who desired emancipation from those who held them in bondage. The flag represented the southern states' bodacious treason in denying their American citizenship, and forming a country of their own so that they could continue to mistreat and hold down black people in those territories. When the Civil War ended, and the confederacy of turncoat states surrendered to the victorious Union, the (former) confederacy was forced to rejoin the Union. They were extremely resentful toward the Union, but they had lost the war; there was nothing they could do about that. So they cowardly turned their animosity toward the newly emancipated (yet defenseless) former slaves. Under the confederate flag they formed the Ku Klux Klan, and they set about to terrorize all black people mainly in the south. The confederate flag was seen by black people as a symbol of terror, evil, hatred, oppression, retaliation, and vicious attack! Wherever slavery and the hateful acts that accompanied it was represented, the confederate flag was flown there. MANY white people opposed the flag and the confederate sympathizers. They joined forces with blacks to seek equal rights for black people and ALL people. The southerners wanted to return blacks to the plantation. They sought to return blacks to bondage. So when the black people asserted their right to be treated equally, the south retaliated by attacking and killing and bombing black people and their establishments -- all under the waving of the confederate flag. When Governor George Wallace of Alabama prevented blacks from being involved with whites in his state, he flew the confederate flag. When he stood on the steps of the Capitol building in his state in 1963 delivering the inauguration speech after just having been elected and declared: "Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! And segregation forever!" ... he did so with the confederate flag flying freely. The flag has ALWAYS offended "my people." It should be offensive to all people! The confederate flag should have never been flown in the first place! Desegregation should have never been enforced in the first place! Those 13* states should have never broken away from the Union in the first place. Slavery should have never taken place to start with. The flag has been offensive to many since day 1. We have continuously tried to get the flag taken down over the years. My parents lived it! They grew up during segregation. They remembered how the flag affected them. They lived in Mississippi and South Carolina; they endured the wrath of the white people there who supported and enforced white supremacy. So when Dylann Roof entered a sacred place of worship in South Carolina and gunned down 9 African American citizens because, as he has said, "Black people are taking over the country," and then later was discovered to own an Internet site that included a cache of photos of Roof posing with a handgun and a Confederate Battle Flag, as well as with the widely-recognized Nazi code numbers 88 (an abbreviation for the salute "Heil Hitler!"), it was the last straw!! That flag is NOT about southern heritage alone [apart from kidnapping, slavery, oppression, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and civil rights]. It's about hate. And that heritage IS hate! One cannot be separated from the other in this circumstance! When it comes to the confederate flag the heritage and the hate are one and the same! That's why we are mad about it! Added comments: Without knowing the history about the flag I can see why lovers of it are so upset. You believe it's an attack on your southern heritage and way of life. You may believe black people have something against you personally. That notion couldn't be further from the truth. By and large, African Americans are well aware of its history, its meaning, and what it has always been meant to represent. Please research your history and know it well. The flag that unites us all in these United States of America is the American flag! I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  Note: Some of the commentary in this letter was taken from a researched source. "With liberty and justice for ALL!"   by HAILE NKRUMAH GAULT

INDEPENDENCE!

by HAILE NKRUMAH GAULT A Child, once under the control and guidance of his/her parents, leaves home one day to go to college, join the military, get married, get a job in another part of the country, or one of a number of other endeavors. The parents have done the best they know how to raise the child, or perhaps they did not. Nevertheless the child, now of age, flies the coop in independence! An Inmate has spent days, weeks, months or years behind bars paying society for a crime he/she has (or unfortunately, has not) committed. The parole board has met and assessed the inmate's prison behavior record, or the inmate has "maxed out" his/her prison sentence. After a period of confinement and duress the inmate is released back into society to gain their independence! The Israelites sold themselves into slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt because of a very severe famine in their own land, and they remained enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. God chose a young man named Moses, a man born a Hebrew but raised an Egyptian by (the new) Pharaoh's daughter, to lead the Israelites to freedom. Most of the Israelites had only known life in slavery; the concept of liberation was unknown. Yet God used Moses to purge them from captivity via the Red Sea to independence! When Jesus Christ came to earth the entire world was in captivity to sin. It was the reason He came here, to free us from our sins. To do so He had to submit Himself to die, be buried (entombed), and then be raised from death to life on the third day. Now anyone in the world, after accepting His gift of eternal life by obeying the gospel can, from sin and eternal death, gain their independence! The Nazi Party was formed in Germany by Adolph Hitler in the early 1930's. Hitler's aim was to drive out and/or murder all "undesirables" from the country. For those whom did not escape or leave willingly, Hitler took hostage, tortured and starved with the eventual intention to exterminate. These victims were mostly Jews, however other victims included homosexuals, the disabled, the mentally ill, the Polish, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other POW's. For twelve years their incarceration and progressive annihilation took place. Yet the Soviet, British and American military forces in April 1945 won for the survivors their independence! The American War of Independence was a battle between the 13 British colonies of North America (New Hampshire, Massachusetts [including Maine], Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York [including Vermont], New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia [including West Virginia and Kentucky], North Carolina [including Tennessee], South Carolina and Georgia) versus the Empire of Great Britain. Since 1608 the colonies had been under British rule, but the North American colonies rebelled against Great Britain and on July 4, 1776 proclaimed independence! [Of course, this independence was not extended to blacks held in bondage. In 1787 and 1788 these thirteen colonies became the United States of America, and her first president, George Washington, was elected in 1789.] The year 1619 began 246 years of the kidnapping, bondage and physical/mental mistreatment of West Africans in the United States of America. The Europeans sought slave labor to plow, plant and harvest the land - and also to otherwise serve their masters - a land and native people they had raped years before. The Natives were not going to submit to this type of back-breaking treatment, so the colonists sought to gain the trust of an unsuspecting group of people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Like the Israelites in Egypt, most of the black slaves over their 240+ years of captivity had never known freedom. Yet when the southern states threatened to secede from the United States, it cracked open the door for the thousands of captives. President Abraham Lincoln led the fight in the War Between the States, and though it was not initially his intention to free the slaves, his preservation of the Union freed them at war's end in April 1865 to gain their independence! "With liberty and justice for ALL!" H A P P Y   I N D E P E N D E N C E   D A Y ,   A M E R I C A !