By PHILIPPE SIMON
When I initiate a discussion with someone bearing the Confederate flag in some fashion, I am usually issued the standard retort exclaiming Southern pride.
There are many noble aspects of the South I am proud of that have either been obscured from view, not portrayed in popular culture or suppressed and hidden. The fight for social justice and against white supremacy uncovered the black voices of the South and illustrated to the entire world the restraint, good intentions and leadership of the black community and its spokespeople, such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the Rev. C.T. Vivian, Fannie Lou Hamer and many others.
The white South is far from being devoid of examples of the resistance to, as well as, the disenfranchisement from, the instituted, post-Reconstruction white supremacist legislation and supporting local governing bodies.
During the Civil War, the 1st Alabama Cavalry, U.S. Volunteers, consisted of farmers who found no common ground with the slave-holding aristocracy and who supported the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Persecuted and conscripted by force, most fled to northern Alabama. Though not avid anti-racists, many saw their interests apart from the slave-holding South.
Many regiments also sprang up in these areas that consisted of former slaves. I found it interesting that the regiments from northern Alabama and eastern Tennessee made up of former slaves were officially designated African Descent regiments. In my mind, at least, this connotes equal status as U.S. citizens and recognizes their heritage in a non-derogatory way.
Now, after decades of persecution and suppression of their story, the descendants are reconstructing that past, and the movement continues to have this true history taught.
Reconstruction saw the birth of political parties such as the Populist Party, Greenback Party, People’s Party, the Grange, the Union Labor Party and the Farmers Alliance in the years following. These parties were mostly made up of white farmers, hill folk and progressives, and in many cases, but not all, black participation and black appeal was necessary. In many counties, these progressive parties required black participation for their very survival.
In response to this, the former slaveholding class reasserted its power through a deliberate process of constitutional conventions and rulings, in front of a backdrop of lynching, intimidation and, finally, legal disenfranchisement.
A good example of this is the 1901 Alabama Constitutional Convention, which sought to disenfranchise black political power. It came up with voting regulations that, in addition to blacks, also eliminated a sizable portion of whites who could not make the financial or educational requirements.
Ratification was opposed by most black counties and 24 predominantly-white counties in the hill country and wiregrass (an area encompassing parts of southern Georgia, southeastern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, with an abundance of wiregrass).
In the first election held after enactment of the 1901 Alabama Constitution, overall voter turnout declined by 38 percent: white turnout by 19 percent and black voting by 96 percent.
A study by the Alabama Policy Conference estimated that in 1941 and 1942, the state Constitution disfranchised some 600,000 whites and 520,000 blacks.
It becomes apparent that when examining the numbers, one can see how the effort to deprive black people of their rights also dispossesses certain percentages of poor and working class whites.
The power of black/white working- and farming-class unity is so profound and so effective a way to gain political and economic power that it took both extreme institutional and extra legal methods to disrupt that movement.
During the Civil Rights Movement up to the present, many amendments to Alabama’s Constitution eliminated some of the bias, but it still has a long way to go. Over the past several years a new movement to review and possibly rewrite that constitution is gaining momentum.
Haleyville, Ala., is also the home of federal Judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr., who made landmark civil rights rulings that ended segregation and voter disenfranchisement in the 1950s and 1960s, including ruling in favor of Rosa Parks against a local Montgomery law that forced black citizens to sit at the back of the bus.
Montgomery is also the home of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that combats hate, intolerance and discrimination through education and litigation.
As we can see, there is a lot of be proud of from Alabama and the rest of the South that has absolutely nothing to do with the Confederacy, its flag or any of the symbols of white supremacist rule. These historical lessons apply anywhere there is poverty, anywhere there is a shortage of jobs and income and anywhere that hate is proposed as the solution; North or South. Our unity as black and white workers and our untold story of resistance is the banner we can unfurl proudly.
Philippe Simon is chairman of the Greenfield Human Rights Commission.