Toppling Confederate-era statues and symbols has erupted into a dangerous trend across cities and colleges in the South. The movement emerged in wake of the vicious Charleston South Carolina church shooting in June 2015, when multiple cities and municipalities decided to remove Confederate-related monuments.
This movement wants to erase any vestiges of America’s racist past so as to not inspire any racially motivated acts of violence in the future. In 2015, South Carolina lawmakers, headed by then-Gov. Nikki Haley, voted to remove a Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds in Columbia in wake of the Charleston slayings.
At my school, Clemson University, the Clemson University Student Government approved a resolution to “denounce the public display of Confederate Flags at Clemson University,” following a recent display of Confederate flags near the campus. The resolution served as a written rebuke toward the Confederate flag and all symbols of white nationalism and racism, after the flag was displayed on Aug. 28 by the Secessionist Party of South Carolina on S.C highway 93 and U.S highway 123.
The Secessionist Party has adopted a counter-revolution called “Operation Retaliation” against the movement to remove Confederate symbolism in the U.S, choosing to fly Confederate flags in downtown Charleston and other prominent cities in South Carolina. According to the group’s homepage, the goals of the Secessionist Party include: “preserving Southern Heritage, educating the public about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and fighting political correctness and political corruption within the State of South Carolina and across the United States.”
The resolution passed by Clemson students seeks to “express Clemson Undergraduate Student Senate’s objection to publicly, displayed Confederate flags on and/or around campus by student and community groups.” The student government attributes the Confederate flag as being representative of the hatred and racism expressed by the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, quoting historian John M. Coski who believed that both groups sought to prevent any “change to the South’s racial status quo” in using the flag.
Controversially, while the resolution acknowledges that display of the Confederate flag is legal, it claims the Confederate flag “promotes racial tensions” in Clemson. The resolution concludes by referencing how the Clemson Board of Trustees drafted their own resolution in 2015, expressing support for the decision to remove the Confederate Battle flag from the Statehouse.
CUSG’s nonviolent measure to ban the Confederate flag on campus is a contrast to the violent actions recently taken at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on Aug. 20, where a group of students toppled the Confederate statue “Silent Sam” and protested against the display of Confederate symbolism on campus. Police were forced to arrest three people following the incident, with a series of violent counter-protests that erupted between Confederate sympathizers and students in support of toppling the statue. Ironically enough, the UNC protests occurred on the exact same day that the anti-Confederate resolution was passed by Clemson’s Senate on Aug. 30, with implications that CUSG’s decision was inspired in part by UNC’s toppling of Silent Sam.
In many regards, Clemson’s history was inspired by Confederate-era traditions in the South. The school’s founder, Thomas Green Clemson, was the son-in-law to John C. Calhoun, one of the most outspokenly racist senators in history. In addition to this, Tillman Hall, Clemson’s flagship building, was named after former Gov. Benjamin Tillman, who oversaw the worst lynching of African slaves in South Carolina’s history. Down the street from Tillman Hall lies Fort Hill, which preserves Calhoun’s large estate that used many slaves for forced agricultural-based labor.
Despite this history, CUSG and Clemson administrators have taken no action to equate the school’s Confederate monoliths to the banning of the Confederate flag.
Several members responsible for the resolution in Clemson’s student government did not respond to requests for comment.
Stone Washington is a student at Clemson University in South Carolina.
