By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

I have always loved the Confederate flag. Oh, I know there are many flags that were unfurled by the Southern Confederacy, but the only flag that I have known intimately has been the so-called “battle flag,” the “stars and bars,” the “Southern cross.”

As a child growing up in Tennessee, I played “army” with the kids from the neighborhood in the woods next to our house. Once in awhile, we would play “Americans vs. Nazis” (most of the time, no one wanted to be a Nazi), but more often it was “Yankees vs. Rebels” (no one ever wanted to be a Yankee!).

Even then, we made or bought flags to stick somewhere on our kudzu, honeysuckle and fir tree “fort.” The unfortunates in the neighborhood who were forced to play the boys in blue, flew the U. S. flag. Those honored to represent our venerable ancestors gathered under the banner of the South. There was no hint of anti-Americanism or racism... we were just proud to have been graced by God to be born in the land of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and other well-known and revered native sons.

In high school, the band would play “Dixie” two or three times a football season and both American and Confederate flags would fly side by side on the 4th of July during the annual parade down Board Street.

When I went off to the Marine Corps in 1970, I eventually took my three foot by five foot Confederate flag and hung it in my wall locker at Fort Lee, Va. While my Northern-born comrades would talk about having an Irish, German, Italian, English, or African heritage, I was content to be a Southerner.

I'm told that eons ago, my ancestors migrated from Germany, or England, or Ireland, or somewhere. As far as I was concerned, they left all that behind to come to the American South and, anyway, Europe couldn't even fight a war without Americans to seal the victory, so who cared? The banner in my wall locker was, to me, simply a reminder of home, of “old times not forgotten.”

Somehow, when I saw it hanging there, I felt less lonely and isolated, closer to my family and home, and comforted by the remembered smells of bacon and sausage, of burning autumn leaves, and of fish (which Grandpa and I caught down by the Fort Patrick Henry Dam) sizzling in the cast iron skillet.

When I got married, I took my well-traveled Southern cross and hung it prominently on the wall in the living room behind the sofa in our small apartment. My wife finally persuaded me to allow her to replace it with a painting or some such piece of junk. She didn't share my affection for the flag.

It's a wonder we stayed married after I discovered that flaw. The notion that, somehow, displaying the flag was a symbol of intolerance and bigotry was preposterous. It was something that a Yankee might say. Yet, as time went on, I couldn't help but notice that many of the people who were using my flag to promote their cause were... well... undesirables.

I saw my first Ku Klux Klan march some decades ago and I was horrified to see these hooded horrors marching down the street of my town carrying my flag! In fact, every time I would see a special about the Klan on television (and in those days, they caused not a little concern to decent citizens of all colors) there, displayed as though it was an emblem of death, was the Confederate flag.

Later, when the neo-Nazis, the skinheads, and the white supremacists crawled out from under their respective rocks, they grabbed hold of my flag and co-opted it for their cause. Only much later, did I realize that, while the flag was a symbol of heritage for me, it had also been a symbol of oppression for millions of other Americans who also had a Southern history, though one much different from mine.

I remember the very first time I viewed the beloved flag with shame. A black Marine, a good friend of mine stationed with me at Quantico, Va., was helping me unload my stuff as I was changing lockers. When I took the flag out of the locker and folded it, I felt his eyes burning into the back of my head.

After a few moments, he asked me what the flag meant to me and I responded with all the things that I had always recalled. I told him about a great-great grandfather, Alexander Epps, who never owned a slave and was a struggling farmer in a place called “poor valley” in Hawkins County, Tenn., left his home to fight against soldiers from the north who were, in his view, invading his homeland and killing his friends and neighbors. I told him that, to me, it just meant home and heritage.

Quietly, he said, “It sure means something different to me.” I silently packed the flag away and never could bring myself to hang it up again.

I wish I could fly it and display it with pride like I used to when I refought the Civil War in the woods next to the house. But my Southern battle flag means something a lot different now than when I was a child. Maybe it always meant something different and I was just too young or too trusting or too naive to see it.

I believe that the flag still has a place in society. I believe that it should be flown over the graves of Confederate soldiers, at the recreated battles that take place frequently around the South, in schools when the Civil War is studied, at special events sponsored by heritage groups, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and maybe in other appropriate places as well.

But the flag just has too much baggage to fly over a state capitol building or to be incorporated as a part of a state flag. People don't think of heroes and causes and heritage when they see the flag. They think of burning crosses and hoods, of violence, of oppression, of slavery, of shaved heads, of lynchings and beatings, even of swastikas and outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Following the close of the War Between the States, a great man encouraged Southern soldiers to return home and become good citizens of a reunited United States. He said, “I think it the duty of every citizen... to do all in his power to aid in the restoration of peace and harmony.” That man was Robert E. Lee.

[David Epps is rector of Christ the King Church. He may be contacted online at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com.]

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