Two active duty U.S. Marines were arrested after hanging a white nationalist flag during a pro-Confederate Memorial Day celebration in Graham, North Carolina on May 20, Times-News reports.
Since the race-fueled massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that left nine dead in South Carolina in June 2015, the presence of the Confederate flag in public places has garnered new attention in the national consciousness .
Recently an article by the Washington Spectator’s national correspondent, Rick Perlstein, was published with the attention-grabbing headline: “It’s Time to Haul Down Another Flag of Racist Hate.” The article gained national attention when Newsweek picked it up on Aug. 11 and ignited a firestorm of resentment over its claim that the origin of the black and white POW/MIA flag is rooted in racism and hatred, rather than remembrance for the more than 80,000 men and women still waiting to come home.
Like many white Southerners, I grew up idolizing Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and George Pickett, and J. E. B. Stuart, and hating Sherman.
