Picture of Sojourner Truth

An Essay: on Pensacola's History and Outmoded Flags

An Op Ed by William Sloan and Christopher "Scott" Satterwhite

Government display of Confederate flags is an affront to descendants of the people who were enslaved under the Confederacy and odious to all who care. The issue, however, as you will see below, goes beyond the mere question of which oppressive flag not to fly.    The "Battle Flag," at least, flew mostly over ordinary men (few women) who somehow believed that their society depended on going to war. But that flag came to be used to glamorize the Southern cause, and we all know, to accompany act after act of bigotry and violence. The national flag, the "Stars and Bars," is worse yet. It was hoisted over the halls of power by rich, educated and elite men (few women). Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declared that the new government "rested upon the great truth that subordination to the superior white race—is the negro's natural and normal condition." Hence, Confederate flags are the only flag among Pensacola's "Five Flags" based solely on racism.

The oft-repeated statement that the Civil War was fought over "States' Rights" is baloney. Indeed, the southern states were induced to ratify the Constitution itself, in 1787, by making three-fifths of persons "not free" count in a state's population. Slaves thus involuntarily added thirty-eight percent to Southern power to elect a House and President favoring their own slavery. The South gained in, or won outright, many hard-fought political and judicial battles over extension of slavery and forcible return of escaped slaves. The 1854 Kansas-Missouri Act extended slavery to the then-northwest states. The Republican Party was organized in response. In secession, Southern Governors cited slavery and fear of "Black Republicans."

I do not deny the valor, fortitude or military skill of the men who fought under the Battle Flag. Admiration and Southern heritage, however, do not validate the rightness of their cause.  Indeed, only three months before Lee surrendered an exhausted army, Confederate political leaders, in their vanity, rejected Lincoln's face-to-face invitation to restore the Union with compensation for emancipated slaves.

What flags, then, if any? There is no monument to celebrate the courage and fortitude of the Slaves who labored in Pensacola, as elsewhere, in humiliating captivity. People who strived, without a flag of any kind, for their own human dignity and to keep families intact in ways we rarely hear of and might not understand if we did.

There is more. People were enslaved under all of Pensacola's five flags. In 1559, de Luna brought Slaves from Africa and the recently-subjugated Aztec people. In the interest of human rights, all these people need to be remembered – again, by their own cultural standards.

There is more still. Native Americans had lived in the Pensacola area for centuries before the Spaniards arrived. Are we to think that the history of Pensacola and Escambia County began just 450 years ago? Are we to think that any flag we've seen represents them?

On December 21 we heard 150 voices, black, white and more, confronting the News Journal from Palafox Street for its misguided editorial in favor of a flying a Confederate flag. But, we have more to change than just an editorial. Measures of the kind I advocate demand an inclusive vision of the history of Pensacola and Escambia County and a painful effort to discard some of our mythology. The benefits will far outweigh the work of bringing about a fresh vision. Pensacola, and News Journal, get on board and get to work!