The Not In Our Town group in Bowling Green, OH shared with us this op-ed from their local paper, Wood County's Sentinel-Tribune [1], about the Confederate flag after the hate crime killings in Charleston, SC.

[2]
Photo Source: The Post and Courier [2]

Sentinel-Tribune Editor Jan Larson McLaughlin writes:

A century and a half is not enough to whitewash the reputation of the Confederate flag.

The flag may be a proud sign of heritage to some. But when that heritage is built on hatred and oppression, there is no way to wipe clean the blood and bondage it represents.

It is unfathomable to me that 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the Confederate flag still flies in government-sanctioned sites.

Individuals have every right to fly Confederate flags on their properties, but the flags have no place in the public workplaces of people who make laws governing all.

Though many have tried to re-brand the symbol as a sign of Southern pride, it just cannot be done. It carries too much baggage. Supporters of the flag say it stands for the strong will of the Southern states to not buckle under federal control. But it’s impossible to separate the symbol from the primary reason those states wanted to secede — slavery.

As unstable as he may be, even the accused shooter Dylann Roof understood the meaning of the flag. Holding and wearing images of the flag, he spouted his hatred of blacks before allegedly killing nine of them at a prayer meeting last month.

Read the entire op-ed at the Post-Sentinel [1] website, learn more about how you can take action in the aftermath of the tragedy in Charleston [3], and watch this video featuring students at the University of Mississippi [4] as they question whether traditions tied to the Confederacy and segregation continue to belong on their campus.