Prisoners of a Long-Lost Cause
Memories of Nelson Mandela, who during his 27 years as a political prisoner in South Africa befriended his jailers, helped put forgiveness into perspective for me. "As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom," he said, "I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind I'd still be in prison."
Mandela's refusal to be further imprisoned even by justifiable resentments liberated more than his spirit. It also prepared the way for South Africa's remarkably peaceful transition to black-majority rule, a worthy model for political leaders around the world -- especially in the United States, where our politics often roil with what I call "ethnic Alzheimer's," a malady in which you forget everything but the grudges.
Old resentments helped bring the flag of the Confederacy back into official display on state flags in the South in the early 1960s, not so much to commemorate the Civil War as to signal a new rebellion against the civil rights movement.
The political power of those old resentments explains why even the state's first Indian-American governor, Haley, its first African-American senator, Scott, and its current presidential hopeful, Graham, all tried to tiptoe around the flag question -- until an unspeakable tragedy struck at one of the oldest black churches in the South.
If anything unites Southern culture, as my late Birmingham uncle used to tell me, it is reverence for the church and good, law-abiding churchgoers like those who were murdered in, of all places, a Bible study class.
I was reminded of a strikingly similar tragedy, the bombing by Ku Klux Klansmen of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls on a Sunday morning in 1963. As that church's current pastor, Arthur Price Jr., told a CNN reporter after the Charleston shooting, "The emotional impact, whether you're talking about the black community or the white community, is it happened in a church, in a place that is out of bounds."
Before the flag can come down, South Carolina's state legislature will have to decide to do it with a two-thirds vote in both houses. That's a big challenge for Haley and her allies. But changing times and the state's need to attract business offer new incentives for South Carolinians to modernize their image -- and free themselves from the prison of a long-lost cause.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
