BAN THE CONFEDERATE FLAG - BAN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

   
Southern Student Organizing CommitteeI found this on reason.com/blog  That blog also shows a picture of Black civil rights leader, John Lewis, shaking hands with a white with the rebel flag as back drop.  Surely, he did not view it as a simple symbol of "racism."
     South Carolina's Gov. Nikki Haley, Republican, has led in demanding the removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol area.  The State legislature approved the measure, and the Confederate battle flag was removed.  The reason is that the Confederate flags are associated with slavery and segregation, and the symbols are hurtful to many Blacks.  The NAACP has called for the removal of the flag for years, and the demand is spreading to other states and now federal cemeteries.
    I am a Southerner and I was engaged in the civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 60s.  And I was friends with other integrationists.  After the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) expelled its white members, Southern white integrationists formed the Southern Students Organizing Committee (SSOC), to work to improve race relations in the South.  The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was limited to the North and West, SSOC was in the South.  To indicate it was Southern, the button sold by SSOC showed two hands shaking in friendship, a Black hand and a white hand, and in the background was the Confederate battle flag.  What other symbol could represent the South?  The magnolia?  No.  The peach?  No.  The alligator?  No.  Cotton?  No.  Only the Confederate flag would indicate that SSOC was a Southern organization to cover the the entire South.  How sad that the fanatics now seek to ban the Confederate flag.
       On the other hand, what is more associated with the institution of slavery, and then Jim Crow segregation, than the Democratic Party?  The Democratic Party sought to guaranty and then extend slavery.  After the war, one of it's campaign songs was "We are the white man's party."  Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan, to propel the Democrats to election victory through intimidation.  The Democrats in power introduced legal segregation in the South, and took away the right to vote of Black citizens.  When Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the US, Democrat Wilson introduced segregation into the federal civil service.  The Confederate flag did none of these things; the Democratic Party did.  If we are to ban the Confederate flag, surely we should also ban the Democratic Party.
           Hugh Murray