peonage to keep African Americans subordinate and marginalized. My grandmother’s parents
were deeply embittered by how the promise of freedom and equality following slavery ended
when white Southern Democrats reclaimed political power through violence.
Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan cloaked themselves in the symbols of the
Confederate South to intimidate and victimize thousands of black people. Nothing unnerved
rural black settlements more than rumors about nearby Klan activity. For a hundred years,
any sign of black progress in the South could trigger a white reaction that would invariably
invoke Confederate symbols and talk of resistance. Confederate Memorial Day was declared a
state holiday in Alabama at the turn of the century, soon after whites rewrote the state
constitution to ensure white supremacy. (The holiday is still celebrated today.) When black
veterans returned to the South after World War II, Southern politicians formed a “Dixiecrat”
bloc to preserve racial segregation and white domination out of fear that military service
might encourage black veterans to question racial segregation. In the 1950 s and 1960 s, civil
rights activism and new federal laws inspired the same resistance to racial progress and once
again led to a spike in the use of Confederate imagery. In fact, it was in the 1950 s, after racial
segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education,
that many Southern states erected Confederate flags atop their state government buildings.
Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during
the Civil Rights Era. It was during this time that the birthday of Jefferson Davis, the president
of the Confederacy, was added as a holiday in Alabama. Even today, banks, state offices, and
state institutions shut down in his honor.
At a pretrial hearing, I once argued against the exclusion of African Americans from the
jury pool. In this particular rural Southern community, the population was about 27 percent
black, but African Americans made up only 10 percent of the jury pool. After presenting the
data and making my arguments about the unconstitutional exclusion of African Americans,
the judge complained loudly.
“I’m going to grant your motion, Mr. Stevenson, but I’ll be honest. I’m pretty fed up with
people always talking about minority rights. African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian
Americans, Native Americans ... When is someone going to come to my courtroom and
protect the rights of Confederate Americans?” The judge had definitely caught me off guard. I
wanted to ask if being born in the South or living in Alabama made me a Confederate
American, but I thought better of it.
I stopped in the prison yard to take a closer look at the truck. I couldn’t help walking around
it and reading the provocative stickers. I turned back toward the front gate of the prison,
trying to regain my focus, but I couldn’t make myself indifferent to what I perceived were
symbols of racial oppression. I had been to this prison often enough to be familiar to many of
the correctional officers, but as I entered I was met by a correctional officer I’d never seen
before. He was a white man of my height—about six feet tall—with a muscular build. He
looked to be in his early forties and wore a short military haircut. He was staring coldly at me
with steel-blue eyes. I walked toward the gate that led to the lobby of the visitation room,
where I expected a routine pat-down before entering the visitation area. The officer stepped
in front of me and blocked me from proceeding.
“What are you doing?” he snarled.