Day 3: The Veil of History

Today began in Albany, where we had some opportunities to take photos at the Albany Civil Rights Memorial, the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, and the outside of the Albany Civil Rights Institute. But what was certainly most moving was singing with Ms. Rutha Mae Harris, one of the original Freedom Singers. In singing the songs of those who sought freedom, those who sang to keep their spirits high and their hearts hardened on justice, I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. As Martin Luther King shared in his Sixth Principle of Nonviolence: God is a God of justice, and justice will win. So, I was not surprised by the presence of the Holy Spirit as we sang those moving words, but I could not be prepared for its presence. The sheer joy I felt, knowing that triumph had come, left my heart overwhelmed. This does not mean that the work of our generation is light, but the work of our parents’ generations can be celebrated for legalized segregation has come to an end. I will never underestimate the power of music again, because as Ms. Harris said, without the Freedom Songs there could not have been a Civil Rights Movement.

But our next stop troubled me deeply. After Albany, we journeyed to Montgomery, Alabama. At the steps of the Capitol building, stood a tall statue of Jefferson Davis looking over Montgomery. There, on the Alabama Capitol steps, there is the mark of where he was sworn in as the only president of the Confederacy. Just one block down is the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Martin Luther King served as the 20^th pastor of the church. In the block separating those two was bicentennial park, which chronicled the history of the state of Alabama. On the final placard, it read “The past is a lesson” and that the people of Alabama “have the ability to purge the bad and retain the good.”

The good in that history of the Civil War though resides in that it must be remembered so that it will not be repeated. And yet, Confederate statues adorn the capitol building as though these figures are to be venerated. Individuals wave the confederate flag as an element of “Southern Pride”. And yet, I wonder how the confederacy is not an element of shame. There seems to me to be no greater action against the institution of American democracy than to stand against it, which is in effect what the Confederacy did. For the contemporary Southerner, where is the pride in brother killing brother in order to keep their fellow American enslaved?

I am painfully aware of the Lost Cause lie that propagated throughout the South, and the groups today that continue to maintain the lies regarding the nobility of the Civil War. The old proverbial phrase “history is written by the victor” is remarkably untrue, and some Southern interpretations of the Civil War highlight that. Groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy continue to fund Confederate statues in order to support their white supremacist ideals, and then mask them with the veil of notions like “Southern Pride” or “Standing Opposed to Northern Aggression” to make them more palatable for the average citizen.

These statues are beginning to fall, and in my lifetime, I do believe each one will come down. But I fear for the next Lost Cause narrative that will seek to rebrand white supremacy. Although we have become far more observant today, and there is a degree of awareness because of the myths like the Lost Cause, one can only identify a lie after it has been heard.  I fear who will hear the next Lost Cause. Will it be those who will propagate it, or those who will snuff it out? I pray today to have the wisdom to identify these lies. For it is only when these new false narratives are extinguished before they can begin to spread, that white supremacy will have no where to hide.

Matt Jenkins

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