THE KINGDOM OF JONES

Oh, these darn Confederate flags.

People like to try to say these flags are innocuous, and are just there to celebrate history, and commemorate the south’s brave and valiant effort to assert states rights.

They will try to tell you that the flag does not represent slavery, and that not all of those who fought for the south were fighting for slavery.
But slavery is and was the central issue of that war. Not everybody in the South fought for the South. Many had better sense than to throw themselves into an unjust and immoral cause.

Take the Kingdom of Jones. Jones County, in the heart of Mississippi was an anti-secession stronghold. They drew up their own Constitution and formed a militia and managed to keep an entire county free-- the "Free and Sovereign State of Jones"—for the duration of the war in the heart of the confederacy. The American Flag flew over the courthouse. The local paper, The Natchez Courier, reported that Jones County had seceded from the Confederacy.

I’ve posted before about my allegiance to ol’ Dixie. I fully understand southern pride. Living in Detroit in 1968 I claimed to be a George Wallace fan. I didn’t fully understand what he stood for, but he seemed to stand for the south, and that was good enough for me.

I tell my friends when I was a boy and the family went to Six Flags, I always wanted a Confederate flag. You could buy them there in the 1960’s. They were such handsome flags.
But was always afraid to ask mom and dad to buy me one.
“Why were you afraid” my friends ask.
“I was afraid because I always sensed that even though it was a good looking flag, there was something wrong with wanting one”
Some of my friends will say “Pshhaw, there is nothing wrong with wanting a Confederate Flag!”
They may be right, but I don’t think so.
The fact is, after about 1971, you couldn’t BUY a Confederate Flag at Six Flags.
Why not?
I guess because at Six Flags someone figured out there was something wrong with selling them.
Even NASCAR, a typically redneck institution if there ever was one, banned Ol’ Dixie from being sold at its events, and has recently asked its attendees not to fly it no more at all. Haha! That went over like a lead balloon.

When I was 4 years old I could see across a field a new High School being built. It was a school I would have attended if we had not moved to Detroit when I was 5.
That school opened in 1962, in the middle of the Civil Rights movement in this country. It would be an all white school for many years, and the mascot they adopted was the “Rebel”, and the symbol, a Confederate flag.
Do you think this is just a coincidence? Do you think it was just southern pride? Or could it have been a thumb in the eye to the Civil Rights movement? A statement issued by an all-white community?
I’ve been wondering just how many schools named themselves “Rebels” and chose the Confederate Flag as its symbol during those turbulent times in our country. I cant find that kind of data anywhere. I can tell you there was another school in the same county that chose the same name and symbol in 1965. I don’t believe there have been any since. I'm sure there haven't been. probably not since about 1966 has a community had the audacity to be so obnoxious.
In the 1980’s both of those schools decided to do away with Old Dixie. It was the students that voted on it. So there is hope for the country.

Last night in Tennessee, the city council voted 19-1 to not fly the Confederate Flag at the courthouse.
Oh thank God.

In related news my FB feed has been jammed with memes indicating outrage that the NAACP wants to blow up Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Meanwhile, the Stone Mountain Association wants to put a Memorial to Martin Luther King right on top of Stone Mountain. It will be a replica of the Liberty Bell, and commemorate King’s “I Have A Dream “ speech, where he says " Let Freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia.”
I think that’s better than blowing it up, but its funny…
The NAACP don’t like it. They just want to blow it up and get it over with.