A Banner of Liberation
by
John J. Dunphy
IMPORTANT NOTE: Here is my column from today’s (7–6–19) edition of The [Alton, IL]Telegraph with the title it carried when I e-mailed it to the newspaper. The column the hard copy in today’s Telegraph reads: “Nike’s dropped shoe bore banner of liberation.” That is NOT what I say in the column!!!! I do not argue that the Betsy Ross flag was any kind of “banner of liberation.” I argue the flag carried by the Union armies during the Civil War was a banner of liberation because those advancing armies liberated slaves in the South!
*******
Colin Kaepernick is back in the news. The controversial former NFL quarterback, who made his name known even to non-sports fans when he refused to stand during “The Star-Spangled Banner,” recently took Nike to task for its new pair of sneakers. Why did he find Nike’s Fourth of July-themed Air Max 1 shoes objectionable? They featured the so-called Betsy Ross flag, which is associated with our nation’s infancy.
The ex-football star noted that the Betsy Ross flag flew over a fledgling nation befouled by slavery. I never cease to be astounded by the irony that Thomas Jefferson, a slave-holder, wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that along these are Life, Liberty” and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson was by no means alone in his hypocrisy, however. Slave-holders outnumbered non-slaveholders among the founding fathers by a margin of two to one.
The ugly historical fact is that every American flag before 1865 represented a nation where slavery legally existed. “The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie,” the abolitionist and escaped slave Frederick Douglass admonished a crowd during an address delivered on July 5, 1852. He assailed the Americans of that era for their hypocrisy. “You invite to your shores fugitives from abroad…protect them, pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill.”
Douglass rallied to the Union cause during the Civil War and actively encouraged enlistment when Lincoln opened our nation’s military to black Americans. In an address titled “Men of Color, To Arms!” that he delivered three months after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Douglass proclaimed, “The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four million of our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty.”
According to the National Archives, approximately 179,000 black men wore the uniform of the Union army. Another 19,000 served in the U.S. Navy. They knew the risks that came with enlistment. The Confederate government announced that captured black Union military personnel could be sold into slavery, even if they had been free men in civilian life. Confederate troops rarely took black troops as prisoners. Men under the command of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest massacred hundreds of black Union troops who tried to surrender at Fort Pillow in 1864.
It’s Colin Kaepernick right to find the Betsy Ross flag and other early American flags objectionable. I would question his judgment, however, if he regards as offensive the flag carried into battle by these courageous black Union soldiers. Those of you who have seen the film “Glory” are familiar with the Massachusetts 54th, a black infantry unit whose men bore the Union flag during their suicidal assault on South Carolina’s Fort Wagner. Half of the Fifty-Fourth’s enlisted men and two-thirds of its officers were killed.
The Stars and Stripes was more than a mere flag for the Union armies that entered the South. It was a banner of liberation. While the Emancipation Proclamation had theoretically freed slaves held in the Confederacy, it took the steady advances of the Union armies — including its black troops — to free these captives. Many slaves participated in their own liberation by fleeing to approaching Union troops.
If Nike wanted to stamp its product with a historical American flag that epitomizes freedom, it should have chosen the flag of the Union during the Civil War. True, it would have offended neo-Confederate apologists for the Old South. But such persons badly need to be offended.
________________
John J. Dunphy is the author of “Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois” and “Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945–1947.” He is the Democratic committeeperson in Godfrey’s 15th precinct and serves as recording secretary of the Godfrey Democrats.