Letting Go of Confederate Identities

Can fostering a new sense of Appalachian identity provide a way for people to connect with their roots while moving away from a racializing and hateful heritage?

An old house in Burke County, North Carolina flying a torn and faded Confederate Battle Flag.

MORGANTON, NORTH CAROLINA—Three weeks ago I sat near the front row of First Presbyterian Church, the meeting space brimming with a hundred or so folks, mostly Burke residents. Nearly every seat was filled, with numerous people standing, the doors opened to let in the early spring evening air. 

The audience eagerly awaited a roundtable panel discussion for a symposium that started early in 2020, “Symbols of the South,” subsequent events postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Organized by the Rev. Kevin Frederick (formerly of Waldensian Presbyterian Church) and Dr. Leslie McKesson (a member of North Carolina’s African American Heritage Commission and Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at The Industrial Commons), this series was designed to spark dialogue around the meaning of Confederate symbols, in particular the Battle Flag and others flown during the Civil War, and monuments erected throughout the Jim Crow Era. 

Despite some passionate opinions, I was pleasantly surprised by how civil the interactions remained, not only among panel participants, but from the audience, as well. The crowd stayed quiet during the roughly 2-hour session, quite a feat for such an urgent and polarizing topic. 

Notably, those eager for the removal of the Confederate monument from the Historic Burke County Courthouse lawn likely took heart in hearing the majority of perspectives shared by panelists’ echoed concerns for racial justice, the inclusion of all people in the history of Burke County, reconciliation with our region’s sordid past, and the oppression and violence that often accompanies Confederate symbols.

‘We Need to Know Everybody’s Story.’

With a panel of eight participants, it was difficult to give each person a fair amount of time to present their perspective and respond to comments from others. Nonetheless, several profound remarks were shared.

Likely the person who spoke the least, Ruth Roseboro, a member of the executive committee of the Burke County NAACP, arguably had the most succinct and prescient comments that cut through the oft-times meandering responses from other panelists. 

“Ever since I was a child, I was interested in history,” she said. “The only drawback from it is, it’s when you say his, it’s ‘his’ story. What about my story? So, we need to know everybody’s story. Every person, every ethnic group, everybody’s story, so it will be real history–American history.”

This response received a handful of audible affirmations from folks in the rows behind me, many of whom were people of color. Roseboro spoke as a Burke resident who has had to wait far too long for other members of our community to wake up to the harsh history and present realities experienced by Black and other non-white folks in the Foothills.

You could feel the incredible restraint in her passionate voice as she had to sit through conversations that should have happened decades ago. 

The ‘Lost Cause’ and Other Pseudo-History

Before I turn to the comments made by Bill Starnes, seemingly the sole Confederate on the panel, a Mount Holly resident representing the Sons of Confederate Veterans, his willingness to participate should be lauded. Not only is he not a Burke County resident, but he entered a meeting space largely unfriendly to his particular worldview. It takes a lot of courage to speak in front of a crowd this large, without any confederates to the right or left on stage. 

Honestly, he was the most important part of the entire event. Without Mr. Starnes, there would have been very little dialogue, and limited opportunities to change hearts and minds. 

That said, unfortunately, Starnes peddled in a lot of Lost Cause mythology and propaganda regarding the so-called “War of Northern Aggression.” He was adamant throughout the evening that the Civil War was not about slavery, arguing “there is so much false history, particularly pertaining to the time period we’re discussing today, about the Confederacy and what their motivations were.”

Each comment was anchored by his belief that we’re getting history wrong.

“There is a lot of talk about the supremacy stuff. The Confederate armies were not fighting to suppress anyone’s freedom,” he said. “There’s a big lie that says that war was fought about slavery. It was not fought about slavery. I could sit here for two hours–and I won’t ask y’all to go through that–and give you fact after fact after fact after fact.”

Starnes even brought historical documentation and lengthy statements from Abraham Lincoln, among others, in an attempt to support the Lost Cause narrative. While I applaud him for utilizing primary sources, there were many key quotes from leading Confederates at the time that he, oddly, chose not to include.

For instance, in his 1861 “Cornerstone Speech,” Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens emphatically declared: “The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us . . . the negro is not equal to the white man; slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Students of history will encounter similar sentiments in statements from each seceding Confederate state, such as this one from Texas: “She [Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wildness by the white race, and which her people intended should continue to exist in a future time.” 

Seated directly to the right of Starnes, Rev. George Logan of the New Day Christian Church and a representative of the Burke Coalition for Reconciliation challenged his pseudo-historical claims. 

“If it wasn’t about slavery, then we wouldn’t have had a war,” Logan stated. “We wouldn’t have had 600,000 men who died if it wasn’t about slavery. Everything in this country has predominantly been about economics. To quote scripture, the love of money, the commitment to money, has been the root of all kinds of evil. The most evil that has been perpetuated upon this nation that we know of, I think, that goes down to the groundwater, is slavery.”

He later stated, “Whether it (the war) was for slavery or not, there were two groups of people who knew what it was about: the slave owners, and the slaves.” 

Slavery Persists Today, Under a Different Name

Near the end of the evening, Tea Yang, a local Hmong historian and refugee who immigrated to the Foothills in the 1990s, brought up a point many folks seem unprepared to acknowledge: Slavery didn’t end with the Civil War.

Due to a clause tacked onto the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery has been able to persist, mostly out of sight of the average American: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." (Italics added.)

Chattel slavery, the right to own another person as property, may be outlawed from the United States, but slavery exists today under the name of mass incarceration, a system chillingly detailed by director Ava DuVarnay in the recent documentary 13th. 

Sadly, Yang’s comment was not picked up by anybody else, and it’s hard to discern how many attendees walked away with an intent to learn more about the persistence of slavery in the United States today. 

Neither Optimism nor Pessimism, but Meliorism

If we can’t generate enough political will to remove a Confederate statue from Burke County’s most prominent public location, then it’s difficult to imagine much meaningful work being done any time soon related to mass incarceration, the war on drugs, the school-to-prison pipeline, police brutality, or even inclusive representation among positions of leadership in the County. 

There’s plenty to be pessimistic about regarding racism and white supremacy in our community, but I prefer to be a meliorist. Society can be improved with diligent and concerted effort. The future isn’t guaranteed. We’re not fated to live in a community mired in racism, nor are we promised the future will be post-racial.

However, there are things we can do to improve our community, and the “Symbols of the South” symposium is one of those. Important viewpoints and stories were shared, with a large number of people present. The symposium has also been written about in both The Paper by Marty Queen and the News Herald by Jason Koon, read by thousands of Burke residents. 

We must act to create progress.

I have hope because many people are calling for change. I see them at the County Commissioner’s meetings every month pleading for elected officials to remove the Confederate statue. I talk with them around town or while sharing a few pints at Fonta Flora, Homer’s, and Hillman’s. I read their op-eds in the local papers. 

While I wish more of these voices were from active and engaged young people in Burke, I’m encouraged by the fact most of the people leading the charge for healing and change are older folks in our community, the people who might be given a free pass because they were “raised in a different time.” 

Positive things are happening, but what can we do to catalyze meaningful and lasting change? Transforming minds and shifting viewpoints related to identity is an incredibly surgical enterprise.

A Small Group Gathers After the Panel

Following the panel, roughly a dozen of us found ourselves seated in the back of the meeting space, debriefing what we had just witnessed, all of us eager to move toward reconciliation. Roughly a dozen people ranging in age from early thirties to early fifties sat in a circle of padded church chairs.

It was apparent to many of us that helping fellow community members—especially those who have ancestors with names on the Confederate monument—see how the Confederate Battle Flag is more a symbol of hate than heritage is a big challenge. It’s painful for people to accept an unsavory truth about their community or ancestors when personal identity is so wrapped up in it. 

I sincerely believe there are people who think certain Confederate symbols are about heritage and not hate: they genuinely do not see any malice in the stars and bars. I also believe they’re misguided. As Dr. Cameron Lippard, who presented during the “Symbols of the South” symposium a few weeks prior to the panel, has said, “That flag only comes out when white people are mad.”

And that’s usually also when other folks are advocating for social progress. 

Our neighbors who identify with so-called “Confederate heritage” are going to remain less likely to consider that they might be wrong, unless we can foster a new identity we can all rally around, one that feels authentic, but also offers a way forward and out of the corrosive fumes of Lost Cause mythology. 

I believe people want an identity that enables them to both celebrate and honor the praiseworthy parts of their past while being malleable enough to blend with the progressive values more befitting our contemporary challenges. After all, if I’m to believe the signs posted along I-40 as you drive toward Morganton, Burke County is “all about advancing.” 

But what kind of identity can people latch onto that feels particular enough that they experience a strong emotional resonance and psychological affinity? How can we generate a sense of identity that feels established and part of a long tradition, while imbuing it with the communitarian values we want reflected in our community in the twenty-first century?

I offer up Appalachia as that answer. 

Embracing Appalachian Identity

While messy, and well, complicated, Appalachian is an identity that has had an articulated home in our region for nearly a century and a half, an identity that has grown up out of the land and many people who have lived here for centuries. Appalachian identity provides a way for us to connect with our roots, physical geography, and heritage while moving forward.

Sure, it’s a contested identity, but it’s pliable enough to accommodate a diverse range of people and experiences, so long as we can coherently communicate what it means in the twenty-first century to be Appalachian.

Despite attempts by distasteful politicians and insipid idealogues eager to exploit the concept of Appalachia for reactionary causes, we are a multi-racial and diverse cultural region, with a distinctness that still remains—albeit undermined by the invasion of consumerist American culture and bowing to trendy forces unfriendly toward rootedness. 

Why not forge Appalachian identity around twenty-first-century values such as egalitarianism, inclusion, local community, sustainability, racial justice, and economic equality? Why not jettison notions of Southern or Confederate identity for those of Appalachian?

As I see it, western North Carolina is far more Appalachian than it is “Southern” or “Confederate.”  

There’s obviously a lot more going on in this discussion about symbols, and Appalachians are not somehow magically absolved of past and present mistreatment of marginalized communities.

However, Appalachians do have the fortune of not founding governments based on racism, slavery, and oppression. In fact, West Virginia, the only state entirely within the Appalachian Regional Commission, voted on separation from Confederate Virginia in 1861 and was admitted into the Union in 1863—in opposition to the Confederate cause.

Furthermore, slavery didn’t really take root in the Appalachian region, largely in part because its rugged terrain wasn’t well suited for plantations and their so-called “peculiar institution.”

Appalachians, however, absolutely have to reconcile with our own shameful past (for instance, slavery existed in every Appalachian county in 1860) and its pernicious impacts in our present, but we’ll do that as Appalachians eager to move forward and progress, not as Confederates or Southerners itching for bygone days, backwards politics, or pseudo-histories.

If we can rally our community around a shared sense of identity that isn’t saturated with racializing and hateful overtones, we might be more effective in letting go of the racism and hate that continues to plague our region, demeaning and dehumanizing our community. If we can abandon Confederate identities for the more fruitful ones available to us, then we might have a better chance at transforming into the type of community many of us want.

We need new symbols. And Roseboro is not alone in stating that she doesn’t “really see a lot of things that say, this is a community for me, including the statue and the flags.”

Alternatively, I recommend Appalachia as that unifying idea for a community deeply in need of new symbols connected to old traditions, but not enslaved by them. 

As for the role history plays, Yang raised the right questions. “The thing about history is, who gets to tell the history?” she asked. “Who has the power? Who gets to tell the narrative?”

We are the ones who share the stories and forge the narratives about our community. We get to decide what it means to be Appalachian, the significance of our past, and how it can guide our future. But we have to let go of Confederate identities before we can do that.