Confederates in the Attic prompt

“Confederates in the Attic” Prompt
        In 1995 in Kentucky, the civil war still seemed to be going on--but not for blacks to get their freedom, but for whites who felt like they were getting theirs taken away.
        Though the blacks were freed from being slaves, whites began feeling like those African Americans were being given privileges and other rights to make up for their years of enslavement. These privileges were more than what the whites had. While the blacks were rising in power, the whites were bottling up the feelings that the slave owners previously had--that they were supposed to have more power than the minority of blacks, they were the ones supposed to privileged. The women who stood up at the Todd County school board meeting complained about that minority having more power when they demanded the Rebel mascot be removed. "I will not compromise my values and equal rights to satisfy a minority."[1] One woman said. What did she believe were equal rights? Did she think that they were giving up their rights to have that mascot if they listened to the African Americans, who had their right to ask for it to be removed?
        Many of the whites believed that the African Americans should have still been slaves. Frances Chapman said that for the blacks, "Slavery was not all that bad, a lot of people were quite happy to be living on large plantations."[1] But her thinking completely changed when the idea of the whites becoming "slaves"--or at least the lower class--was brought up. The subject of controversy was the Rebel flag, a school spirit symbol that caused the murder of Michael Westerman. The flag used to be the symbol of the south that fought to keep slavery going--but this town wasn't even on that side of the war. "Blacks don't really have anything against the flag. They just don't want us to have it. They want the best jobs, the biggest money. Now they want this. If we lose the mascot, it'll just be a matter of time before we lose everything."[1] Chapman said. She seemed to really believe that the blacks were then going to become the "slave masters". This is just like the Reconstruction, when the Freedman's Bureau was established. Benjamin F. Perry, the provisional governor of South Carolina, said, "First, the Negro is to be invested with all political power, and then the antagonism of interest between capital and labor is to work out the result."[2]
        The minority of African Americans seemed to be rising in power, and the whites didn't like it. With everything that happened, it seemed as though the roles were about to be switched. Chapman said in an angry tone, "Don't put us where they used to be."[1] Are those the feelings of all of the townsfolk? No one wants to be enslaved, and who knows that better than the ones who had had no powers previously? The whites just don't understand what it was like, and they're afraid that soon they're going to find out.
        Not only was there a war between races going on, but it also seemed like there was a controversy about the role women had in all of this--many were factory-trapped mothers who wanted their rights as well. The right to vote, the right to have their voices heard, the right to stand up for what they wanted--but who was listening? They felt as if the blacks were taking what was rightfully theirs--they should have gotten the rights before the African Americans, they were white and they were higher and they were there first. Horwitz said, "it struck me that the recent media attention lavished on 'angry white males' neglected the considerable depths of female rage on display..."[1]--they had more feelings bottled up than any white man. They were speaking out against their authority, and not nonviolently in some ways. This is very similar to another murder that happened elsewhere in Kentucky nearby Guthrie, where these women lived and this controversy started. Since 1995, there have been more and more attacks on federal workers, the general authority of anywhere--"The most deadly attack on federal workers came in 1995 when the federal building in Oklahoma City was devastated by a truck bomb, killing 168 and injuring more than 680."[3] The most recent incident was a man being hanged with the word "fed" on his chest--this happened in September of 2009.
        However, these fights and worries in Guthrie were over things that, in the past, mattered little to the whites or blacks. A black storekeeper said, "Kids today, they're weaker and wiser. A lot of things we didn't pay attention to, they do. If we were called a nigger, we shook it off. Just went about our business. Not now."[1] The elder generation might not have started a even a small fight because of something like that. But this trivial thing blew up into a whole murder and trial, and it wasn't even because of the flag--some blacks didn't even know the meaning of it. A young woman, a teenager in high school, supplemented the storekeeper's words when she said, "We aren't going to just take it like our parents did,"[1] and implied that they'd rather do something about those kinds of words and comments than sit back.
        "I feel like my grandchildren will see another civil war,"[1] Said the aunt of the murdered Michael Westerman, Brenda Arms, "Between black and white, not North and South. People just can't seem to get along."[1] With things going on the path that they are now... She might just be right. There might be a war in the small, uneventful town of Todd County, Kentucky.

Sources:
[1] "Confederates in the Attic", "Dying for Dixie" by Tony Horwitz
[2] Barney, William L., The Passage of the Republic: An Interdisciplinary History of Nineteenth-Century America (1987), p. 245
[3] "AP source: Census worker hanged with 'fed' on body" by Devlin Barrett and Jeffery McMurray, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jbzG_BlkG2Hfc818EPRRn1bBlP6gD9ATASJ00