Traveling in the Deep South
We all have ideas about The Deep South, right? What comes to mind for me is drawling accents, below-average rankings in education (in some cases, bottom-10), hot sticky weather, and then there's that whole Civil War - slavery - racism thing...
I've traveled to The Deep South before: I've previously flown in to New Orleans, or Atlanta, or Miami and then flown back out again (all of those trips were accompanying my ex on business). But I've never driven around, visited smaller cities, gotten much of a feeling for the land and its people. I've never really traveled in The Deep South before this trip.
The parts of the Natchez Trace Parkway that I traveled in Alabama and Mississippi often reminded me of movies about the Civil War. The road was smooth and relatively straight, but within close sight off the road to the left and right the terrain was intensely hilly and thickly wooded. Since it's January, I could see a lot more of the contour of the land than I imagine I would be able to with the trees in full leaf. (Unfortunately, none of the places where I could pull out to park and take a photo really illustrate the kind of terrain I'm talking about.) The sun was warm, but the breeze was chilly, and the ground frequently looked wet, even swampy. It's easy to imagine soldiers traveling through the challenging landscape on foot, wet and cold and weary.
When I got to Tuscumbia, before I visited Helen Keller's birthplace (or even checked into my hotel), I noticed a brilliant white building in a town square with a statue out front. The next day, my guide at Helen Keller's house suggested I visit the old train station a few blocks away from her house before I leave town. The building where Annie Sullivan disembarked still stands, although today it houses a museum instead of a working train station. After walking around a bit in the brisk breeze, I noticed that I was only a couple of blocks away from that stunning white building, so I walked a little further to get a closer look.
View from the side I approached from:
View from the front with the statue I mentioned:
I photographed the inscriptions on all sides of the statue, and here are the words:
This trip has changed my opinion about leaving statues like this in place for people to see. Taking them down robs us of history, however we interpret that history. I think it's probably better to add a statue of Martin Luther King than to take down a statue of General Lee. Yes at first glance that might seem incongruent in a town square like this, but history that's worth remembering is likely to be messy.
I still think that government buildings in the South should not fly the confederate flag. So far I haven't seen that happening anywhere, although I have seen some confederate flags in places other than government buildings. But the statues tell a story that is still relevant. And when I imagined those soldiers trudging through the hilly, cold, marshy woods along the Natchez Trace Parkway, I was not imagining only gray uniforms or only blue ones. I was imagining cold, weary people caught up in something way bigger than they probably understood very well.
When I see a confederate flag flying, I don't understand what it means to the person flying it, but I suspect the worst. That worst would be that the person in that house or truck wishes that the South won the Civil War and still practiced slavery to this day. Or it's possible that the person is just trying to say "I'm a rebel and I don't care what anyone thinks." That's a poor way to proclaim being a rebel in my view, but then rebels don't much care what I think.
The history of the confederate flag is more interesting than I realized. For the first two years of the war, there was an entirely different flag than the one we're familiar with today. They decided to change it because it too-closely resembled the U.S. flag, especially when hanging on a pole in a battlefield.
I've traveled to The Deep South before: I've previously flown in to New Orleans, or Atlanta, or Miami and then flown back out again (all of those trips were accompanying my ex on business). But I've never driven around, visited smaller cities, gotten much of a feeling for the land and its people. I've never really traveled in The Deep South before this trip.
The parts of the Natchez Trace Parkway that I traveled in Alabama and Mississippi often reminded me of movies about the Civil War. The road was smooth and relatively straight, but within close sight off the road to the left and right the terrain was intensely hilly and thickly wooded. Since it's January, I could see a lot more of the contour of the land than I imagine I would be able to with the trees in full leaf. (Unfortunately, none of the places where I could pull out to park and take a photo really illustrate the kind of terrain I'm talking about.) The sun was warm, but the breeze was chilly, and the ground frequently looked wet, even swampy. It's easy to imagine soldiers traveling through the challenging landscape on foot, wet and cold and weary.
When I got to Tuscumbia, before I visited Helen Keller's birthplace (or even checked into my hotel), I noticed a brilliant white building in a town square with a statue out front. The next day, my guide at Helen Keller's house suggested I visit the old train station a few blocks away from her house before I leave town. The building where Annie Sullivan disembarked still stands, although today it houses a museum instead of a working train station. After walking around a bit in the brisk breeze, I noticed that I was only a couple of blocks away from that stunning white building, so I walked a little further to get a closer look.
View from the side I approached from:
View from the front with the statue I mentioned:
I photographed the inscriptions on all sides of the statue, and here are the words:
- "A tribute to the confederate soldiers of Colbert County by the Tuscumbia Chapter United Daughters of the Confederacy 1911."
- "The men were right who wore the gray and right can never die. The manner of their death was the crowning glory of their lives. 1861 - 1865"
- "God of our fathers help us to preserve for our children the priceless treasure of the true story of the confederate soldier."
This trip has changed my opinion about leaving statues like this in place for people to see. Taking them down robs us of history, however we interpret that history. I think it's probably better to add a statue of Martin Luther King than to take down a statue of General Lee. Yes at first glance that might seem incongruent in a town square like this, but history that's worth remembering is likely to be messy.
I still think that government buildings in the South should not fly the confederate flag. So far I haven't seen that happening anywhere, although I have seen some confederate flags in places other than government buildings. But the statues tell a story that is still relevant. And when I imagined those soldiers trudging through the hilly, cold, marshy woods along the Natchez Trace Parkway, I was not imagining only gray uniforms or only blue ones. I was imagining cold, weary people caught up in something way bigger than they probably understood very well.
When I see a confederate flag flying, I don't understand what it means to the person flying it, but I suspect the worst. That worst would be that the person in that house or truck wishes that the South won the Civil War and still practiced slavery to this day. Or it's possible that the person is just trying to say "I'm a rebel and I don't care what anyone thinks." That's a poor way to proclaim being a rebel in my view, but then rebels don't much care what I think.
The history of the confederate flag is more interesting than I realized. For the first two years of the war, there was an entirely different flag than the one we're familiar with today. They decided to change it because it too-closely resembled the U.S. flag, especially when hanging on a pole in a battlefield.
The next flag had a white background with a canton that looks like the Confederate flag seen today:
That caused issues on the battlefield too, because it too closely resembled a flag of truce. There's a lot more detail on the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America if flag history is of interest to you, but to summarize, the flag we see today was never officially the flag of the confederac. It was actually the "Second Confederate Navy Jack and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia." It is sometimes used by far right-wing political activists in Europe, especially in Germany where flying the Nazi flag is illegal.
I'll get back to the lighter travel and sightseeing stuff in my next installment, but I thought this was interesting history and wanted to capture my thoughts while I was still feeling the echoes of the landscape along the Natchez Trace Parkway.
Comments
Post a Comment