I want you to pay special attention to the words on this post. They are not mine, but were written by Captain as he personally grapples with the issues swirling around us today. It is a self-reflection that doesn't surprise me...it is one of his finest qualities.
Reconciliation and Redemption
by John Tally
“I’ve had a turn on awaking this morning of the men who were my admiration and wonder in the days of Calhoun... It was unfortunate that politics and politicians were so exclusively dominant over the minds of young men of the Palmetto State ... We were fired, thus, unhealthfully... Had literature, science, art, commerce and agriculture — especially agriculture— been our attraction ... substituted for the passional partisanship ... what a yield there would have been of the fruits and flowers for enrichment of the world of mind..." (From Dual Overheat by Rev. Joseph Cottrell in the Carolina Spartan, Spartanburg, SC 1892. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00026239/00013/46?search=calhoun)
Rev Joseph Benson Cottrell, my great, great grandfather, grew up in South Carolina. After graduating from The Citadel and moving to Alabama he was ordained in 1854 by the Methodist Church in Tuskegee. He was a prolific writer and outspoken about the issues of his time. It was quoted in his obituary of 1895 that Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy of Southern States, said Cottrell was “the most eloquent defender of secession” of the states from the union. Yet, in 1865, five years after defending secession, Joseph Cottrell stood before the Methodist conference in Montgomery, Alabama and defended the “full affranchisement of the negro.” By 1870 Solomon Deary, a black minister and educator, was recorded as a member of Cottrell’s household in the census of Bullock county, Alabama.
In an article entitled Black Shadow dated April 1882, Cottrell wrote: “Many of us before the war, and for time subsequent thereto, believed that every negro had a divine right to a white man for a master, and benevolently strove to secure him his franchise, but we see it differently now. For one, I rejoice in the freedom of the negro. Let there be the same chivalry on his behalf now as there was on behalf of what we deemed his right to his old relation to his master.”
Fast forward a hundred years. While serving in the South Carolina House of Representatives I was given the opportunity to cast a vote to remove the Confederate battle flag from atop the South Carolina state house. I voted to keep it flying. That vote was used to seal my defeat for reelection by distributing a record of that vote among the black churches on the eve of the election. My fault. I should have voted to remove the flag, but I didn’t.
Having grown up in the south I have been part of the failure to acknowledge and remedy the “Black Shadow” that continues today. My grandmother held the Florida delegation in the 1948 Democratic convention when the Dixiecrats walked out protesting the call for equal rights. (See blog post dated Saturday, November 24, 2012, entitled "A Steel Magnolia in the Family.") My brother as a student at Birmingham Southern in the 1960's spoke out for civil rights. But when given that opportunity, I failed.
My father-in-law, Schaefer Kendrick, wrote several years later that even though we southerners embrace the politeness for which our south has been noted, we continued to wave the confederate battle flag as a symbol of heritage while a large portion of our population saw it as a reminder of oppression and racism. Ultimately the flag was removed from atop the state house, though it was still flying on the grounds.
I believe there are many other statues and symbols of the “Black Shadow” in public places that more appropriately should be move to museums or confederate cemeteries. The removal of these symbols from the public square is just the beginning. We must learn to treat everyone with respect no matter their race or religion. Reconciliation and redemption can only come by rejecting the policies of division that have existed in the past and still flourish today. Stand up and be heard.
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