A Change of Mind

I've changed my mind about the Confederate flag.

As a young person, I thought of the flag as a stage prop in a lingering melodrama. It wasn't revered in my white, Confederately-descended family, although now and then I noticed my father might drift into thought when he caught sight of the flag, maybe reminded of his ancestors; but in general the Confederate flag didn't figure in our lives. I had no feelings for it, and I was kind of proud I didn't.

But I do have feelings now. I'm afraid of the thing, and afraid of those who wave it. One Sunday afternoon several years ago a crowd of marchers brandishing and wearing the flag paraded down Broad Street and into the park next to my office, where they rallied and proclaimed their supremacy as white people. What scared me most, beyond their threatening appearance and their hating words, was this: they had brought their children with them. Some Canadian tourists, standing with me in the pretty afternoon sunlight, asked me if this happened often. I said no, I'd never seen anything like it before, and instantly I recognized in myself the denial, the blindness, and the terror rising.

Josephine Humphreys is author of four novels, Dreams of Sleep (winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award for the Best First Novel of 1984), The Fireman's Fair, Rich in Love, and Nowhere Else on Earth. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, where she was born.

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