In 1955, 15 year old Emmett Till from Chicago visited relatives in Mississippi. A white shop owner accused him of flirting with her. In response, the woman's husband and associates kidnapped the boy, beat him, gouged out his eye, shot him and finally disposed of his body in the river. At their trial, they were acquitted. After the acquittal, they bragged about the killing to reporters.
When Till's body was sent back to Chicago for burial, his mother decided on an open casket, so that the world could see what kind of "justice" the American South delivered to a boy for the "crime" of flirting with a white woman.
Sixty years later, in 2015, Sandra Bland, also from Illinois was driving through Texas when she was pulled over and issued a ticket for failing to signal a lane change. When she refused to put out her cigarette, she was ordered from her car, thrown to the ground, threatened with a taser and arrested. While in jail, she died from asphyxiation---for the "crimes" of failing to signal a lane change and smoking a cigarette in her own car.
I have lived in the South all my life. I have seen some things change and too many other things that have not changed enough. Getting rid of the Confederate Flag will not even begin to fix what is wrong with this region of the country. Yes, there are pockets of sanity in the South, mostly urban areas. But there are also pockets of racist insanity--like Waller County, where Ms. Bland died, Waller County which has repeated attempted to deprive the mostly Black students of Prairie View A&M University of their right to vote.
“I dont hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!