Anthony Hervey — a 49-year-old black activist known for being a vocal proponent of the Confederate flag — died Sunday in a car crash caused by a car-full of black hecklers who chased and verbally attacked Hervey, driving his vehicle off the Mississippi highway.
Hervey was driving home from a rally to preserve the Linn Park Confederate Monument in Birmingham, Alabama, the Daily Mail reports. The memorial is soon to be removed from the park pursuant to a recent vote by Birmingham political leaders.
Hervey was a well-known black activist for preserving the Confederate flag who’s advocacy dates back to more than two decades ago.
In his efforts to oppose movements to change or remove the flag, Hervey often protested by sporting Rebel soldier attire and waving the Confederate flag in Oxford Square, Mississippi.
His reasoning? To honor and raise awareness about the black soldiers who served in the Confederate army during the Civil War.
“[Defending the Confederate flag] is not racism,” Hervey said in 2001 interview reported by Daily Mail. “This is my heritage. [It’s] standing up for home.”
In the car with Hervey was another black Confederate flag supporter, Arlene Barnum, who survived the crash.
Barnum said that the 2005 Ford Explorer crashed when Hervey swerved to avoid another vehicle that pulled up beside them containing about four or five young black men who were shouting angrily at the Confederate flag activists.
“It spun like crazy and we flipped, flipped, flipped,” Barnum recounted to a Mississippi state trooper. “It was awful.”
The Confederate Flag has become an issue of stronger contention lately because a photo was found of the perpetrator of a tragic and despicable mass shooting at a church in which he was posing with said flag. This represents proof to many that the flag is a symbol of racism and hatred. However, there are others that maintain that the flag is a legitimate symbol of Southern heritage and culture, protest against an overreaching Federal government, etc.
First, it is important to clarify what is meant by “Confederate Flag”. The flag that is most commonly associated as such was never actually the official flag of the Confederate States of America though later designs did incorporate it. It was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia which was commanded by Robert E. Lee at the time of its adoption thought it was Beauregard who originally approved it. This flag was used instead of the official C.S.A. flag of the time because the official flag was similar enough to the U.S. flag that it could cause confusion on the battlefield. The original version was square though the Army of Tennessee did adopt a rectangular version and most modern reproductions are also rectangular.
First official flag of the C.S.A.Confederate Battle Flag
Those who see this flag as a symbol of racism and racial hatred do so for a variety of reasons. One of the main reasons of course is the perception that the Civil War was fought over slavery with the North wanting to abolish slavery and the South wanting to keep it. It doesn’t help that many “Dixiecrats” used this flag as a symbol when fighting against the civil rights movement and desegregation. The fact of the matter though is that this flag was rarely, if ever used to promote any kind of racial hatred before World War II. This was when the third incarnation of the KKK adopted the Confederate battle flag. Before this time, they used the U.S. flag.
The Civil War really started when the North invaded the South after several states had seceded (or arguably when the U.S. army refused to turn over Fort Sumter after South Carolina seceded). The war itself was caused by the Southern states seceding and Lincoln and the U.S. government using force to bring those states back into the Union. This raises the question of whether or not the states and the people in the states have the right of self determination. In other words, does a state have the legal or moral authority to break away and form a new country? This is almost exactly how the United States was formed in the first place. It formed by breaking away from England. If you believe in the right of self determination and you believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence it becomes really hard to argue against the right of secession.
Ironically, in the early days after the Constitution was adopted, it was not uncommon for Northern states to threaten to secede. It was not commonly argued at that time that it would be somehow illegal for them to do so or that force should be used to prevent it. In fact, when New York, Virginia and Rhode Island adopted the Constitution, they included clauses asserting the right to secede from the Union. The acceptance of these ratifications implies all states have the right to secede as the law must apply equally to all. There are differing legal opinions about the right to secede but even the Supreme Court case (Texas v. White) that ruled that a state could not secede unilaterally also ruled that it could happen via mutual consent or via revolution. The difference between “revolution” and “unilateral secession” would seem to be somewhat a matter of semantics and seems to primarily involve having a specific list of grievances as to why the state is seceding/forming a new government (much like the Declaration of Independence). It’s hard to imagine a state going to the lengths of secession without some pretty serious grievances.
It is hard to argue that Lincoln and the United States had the legal and moral authority to use force in order to bring states back into the Union that they had voluntarily left. You could certainly make a moral argument if Lincoln’s stated goal was to free a race of people from involuntary servitude. However, this was never Lincoln’s goal. According to Lincoln himself:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
Even Lincoln did not think the war was about slavery.
However, just because slavery was not the direct cause does not mean it was not part of the problem. For the most part, the Southern states left the Union because they felt that the Federal government was overstepping their authority on a variety of issues and violating states’ rights. Slavery was by no means the only states’ rights issue but it was certainly one of the issues viewed by most in the South to be a states’ rights issue and it was the issue of slavery that was most used in various statements of secession by Southern states. Regardless, most of those fighting and supporting the South in the Civil War were doing so to defend their home, state and country. Ironically, the fear that the Federal government was willing to use force to prevent secession increased support for secession in states like Virginia. Whatever the legal view was then or is today, they believed they had the right to secede and they saw Union forces as foreign invaders which was, in effect, what they were. Even those that had opposed secession for the most part supported their state and new country when secession came. Robert E. Lee was one of them. Slavery was a morally repugnant institution and it had some role in the root causes of the civil war but when it comes down to it, slavery was not the reason the Union invaded the South or the reason that the South fought back though the issue of slavery did play a large role in why many states chose to secede in the first place.
This is not a simple issue. It is certainly not true that slavery per say was the cause of the civil war. In fact, you can reasonably argue that states have every right to secede as part of the right of self determination and that the cause of the war was the willingness of the U.S. to use force in order to keep the Southern states in the Union. The South seceded over what it saw as trangressions by the Federal government into states’ rights issues. Unfortunately, slavery was one of the things that the South considered a states’ rights issue. In that I absolutely believe they were wrong.
This makes it easy to romanticize the civil war as a war of liberation but this really had little or nothing to do with the reasons Lincoln decided to go to war. His goal was to keep the Union together, period. He said so himself. In fact, he was every bit the racist the average slave-holding southerner was. His idea was to ship former slaves to Liberia.
The issue of slavery as a states’ rights issue has forever tainted the idea of states rights, the South, and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia among other things. I’m not sure how that will be overcome by those that support the flag regardless of how noble their reasons. Every instance in which some lunatic is found with such a flag or some racist organization with nostalgic delusions of slavery displays it serves to further undermine its legitimacy as any sort of positive symbol. It doesn’t matter that these people and groups are not representative of the majority who display the flag. That is what gets broadcast and reported upon and those are the things that serve to shape public opinion. The truth is both sides have legitimate reasons for viewing the flag the way they do. What is not legitimate is deciding for someone else what the flag represents to them.
