Ghosts Of The South

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Alabama In Selma, a monument to a Confederate--and Klan founder

The South often feels to me like one small antimodernist town, with the same twisted vines and story lines running through it. The last person I spoke to in Mississippi, ex-Governor William Forrest Winter, told me about sitting on his granddaddy's knee as a boy and hearing stories about how the old man fought under the fearless Confederate hero Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose last name became Winter's middle name. This same hero, however, was accused of slaughtering black Union soldiers who surrendered in a battle at Fort Pillow, Tenn. He went on to become the first Imperial Wizard of the K.K.K. Winter, now 79, began his political career as a segregationist but today is one of the most eloquent proponents of a new flag as a symbol of a new day.

Selma seems stuck in an old day. Last fall, not far from where blacks were beaten as they marched for the right to vote 100 years after the end of the Civil War, and not far from the "I Had a Dream" monument to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a statue of Forrest was raised on city property. The slate-gray memorial and its bright rebel symbol were approved during the 36th and final year of onetime segregationist Mayor Joe Smitherman's time in office. It was unveiled five days after the first black mayor in city history, James Perkins, was inaugurated.

"My position has not changed. It needs to be moved," Perkins says in his office as the city council dickers over his recommendation to find somewhere other than city property to plant Forrest. Perkins was offended that the statue was raised at all in a town where he grew up under Jim Crow, knowing he could get locked up for mere eye contact with a white woman. And he was offended that instead of beginning his term by getting a jump on job development and education reform, he was dragged into a 150-year-old conflict about race.

One day at the statue, I watch a car pull up and follow a young man who goes to have a look at Forrest. "They want this statue moved because he started the K.K.K. That's the only reason," William Greene, 22, a white, unemployed local guy says indignantly. "To me he's a hero who represents what we're about. The K.K.K.--you could take it as you want. There's n______ that are black and white and other groups...The Klan is against scum of all types."

To hear him tell it, the Klan is like a United Way agency. "The Klan has changed over the years," Greene continues. "It's not as bad as it used to be. Some of my best friends are in the K.K.K., and they have black friends, so what does that tell you?"

None of this surprises Rose Sanders, a take-no-prisoners African-American attorney who disrupted council discussions on Forrest with speeches and prayer, once getting ejected when she wouldn't keep quiet. "The tragedy is that they really believed we would not be offended," she says. "We're not expected to react like first-class citizens. You could take the poorest white child in town, and that child will feel superior to me with my Harvard law degree."

That Forrest made his way onto city property, next to a museum named for ex-Mayor Smitherman, is odd given that Selma now has a black majority among residents and council members. By the time Smitherman left office, 12 of his 16 cabinet members were black. The man's politics had evolved. His heroes had not. Perkins has the best explanation for how the Forrest monument could still be standing: 10% hate him, 10% love him, he says, "and 80% are tired of fighting." Finally, after weeks of fighting, the council in February voted 5 to 4 to cart the Forrest statue to a cemetery where Confederate veterans sleep. One white council member voted for removal. Two blacks voted to leave it where it stood. One explains, "The statue had to do with something in the past. It has nothing to do with what's going on currently."

If statues need to come down, says historian Robert Rosen, "how far back do we go? Should the Washington Monument be brought down because George owned slaves?" Rosen argues for a more nuanced attitude toward Civil War symbols. "Of course the South seceded because they were worried about Lincoln and an attack on slavery," he says. "But racism was part of American life. Lincoln and Stephen Douglas were racists in the sense that they didn't believe black people to be equal to white people. Everyone was a racist, so it's not fair that the South should be singled out. The Federal Government was segregated through most of the 20th century. The U.S. Army was segregated until the end of World War II. Are schools in Baltimore, Md.; Boston; and New York City integrated now?"

Georgia In the shadow of the Stone Mountain Confederate memorial

Chuck Burris is the first black mayor of Stone Mountain, a historic town of 8,000 known for the dramatic Confederate memorial carved into the mountain above it and the rebel-theme park that draws 4 million visitors a year. Burris lives in the former home of an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. That's progress, but when it comes to wiping out color lines in the South, it's often a case of one step forward, two steps back. Burris says he has received bomb threats since the city stopped an effort by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to fly the battle flag over the tombstones of 150 unknown Confederate soldiers, and he makes a point too often lost on the neo-Confederates. "I'm as Southern as any other person," he says. "The Confederate flag is not a symbol of my heritage. When we define the South only in terms of the Civil War, do you know how much of Southern history we lose?"