Let’s talk about the Confederate flag

Last week’s massacre in Charleston has now set up a new conflict: whose sacrifice do we honor?

The Sunday service was held as usual at Emanuel AME in Charleston.

“It’s been rough. Some of us have been downright angry. But, through it all, God has sustained us,” said Rev. Norvel Goff at the service.

He preached that the response to the shootings must be to confront violence with peace and to trust in God in the face of evil.

“The blood of the Mother Emmanuel Nine requires us to work until not only (for) justice in this case, but for those who are still living in the margin of life,” he said.

But we’ve been at a crossroads like this before — in the ’60s when Martin Luther King Junior’s gospel of non-violence was challenged by other leaders who thought he was too soft.

And outside the church there were angrier voices being raised against the flag that still flies at the statehouse by command of the South Carolina Legislature — at the statehouse.

CBS’s Adriana Diaz was there.
flag will upset people like Randy Burbage, a memb
“Fifteen-hundred protesters gathered at South Carolina’s state house where the Confederate Flag flies high,” Diaz reported. “For many, the flag represents hate and intolerance. But to some, the flag is a historic symbol that commemorates fallen soldiers from the Civil War.”

There seems to be a fear among some South Carolina politicians that taking down the Confederate flag will upset people like Randy Burbage, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who had 57 ancestors that fought for the Confederacy.

What do you when your relatives died for a cause that people no longer embrace?

And yet, if the families of the nine victims of Dylann Roof can peacefully come to terms with their loss, you wonder if it just might be possible to accept the loss of one flag at the statehouse.

This article was originally published June 22, 2015 and modified August 22, 2019.