COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — With a Confederate flag in hand, a black South Carolina state senator said Thursday that African-Americans have cause to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and he hopes discussions over the next four years can unite black and white South Carolinians.
Democratic Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston said black
and white students across South Carolina will start seeing lots of Confederate
flags on Tuesday, the anniversary of the war's beginning in Charleston Harbor,
and the sight shouldn't be divisive.
"For the next four years, you're going to see
this and you're going to see a whole lot of it," he said at the podium on
the Senate floor. "Instead of dividing yourself talking about why the war
was fought, and I don't like this and I don't like that, understand this as an
African-American: Before the war you was a slave, after the war you was free,
and in 2012 you can do anything that you want to do."
He said America was united after the war.
"The Confederate soldiers go home, the Union
soldiers go home, but the slaves are free," he said.
Ford said senators should get involved in
anniversary commemorations to encourage understanding, to prevent
misinformation and the spread of hatred.
"If people died, and we're going to have this
celebration, I want everybody in South Carolina to be united on it, to
understand each other, to talk to each other," said the 62-year-old New
Orleans native. "Don't be just mean-spirited. Be willing to talk to your
white colleagues. Be willing to talk to your black colleagues. Be willing to go
to the schools and talk to students, say, listen, we've got to move forward
from what you think happened between 1861 and 1865."
In South Carolina, which begat the Jim Crow-era
South, the Confederate flag has been the cause of protests and an 11-year
tourism boycott of the state by the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. A 2000 legislative compromise, which Ford helped broker,
removed the flag from atop the Statehouse dome, and from Senate and House
chambers, and put it on a 20-foot pole beside the Confederate Soldiers Monument
on the front law of the Statehouse.
But the NAACP never approved of the location, more
visible than before, and earlier this year renewed its call on legislators to
remove it, saying the Confederate flag is a symbol of injustice, not heritage
as many white Southerners argue. In December, Civil War buffs held a
"Secession Ball" in Charleston to commemorate South Carolina's vote
to secede from the United States. The NAACP held a protest outside, saying it
made no sense to celebrate a heinous event that led to death and destruction,
or to honor those who committed treason against their country.
The Rev. Joseph Darby, a Charleston NAACP leader,
disagreed with Ford that the Civil War is anything to celebrate.
"That's basically like saying we should
celebrate the Pearl Harbor attack like it hastened the integration of the
military," he said.
Unless Ford is willing to put the Confederate flag on
campaign literature, "he should not start that kind of rhetoric," he
said. "I'm disappointed and disgusted. I think that Sen. Ford is woefully
deluded. I think he has better things to do than be a Confederate
apologist."
Ford, a former gubernatorial hopeful last year who
lost in the Democratic primary, said people should embrace their heritage and
honor ancestors who died in a war that ended slavery.
"I got a lot of liberal friends who I know
love their heritage but are afraid to embrace it. Why? Because they'll be
called a racist," Ford said. "For the next four years, I don't care
who embrace their heritage. I don't care. Because people died in your family
four or five generations ago, just because you was living in the South."
He touted his own history as cause for celebration,
from being arrested 73 times during the civil rights movement, to being a state
senator since 1993.
"We came a mighty long way as black and white
citizens," he said.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Jim Davenport)
