The Confederate Battle Flag and Its Portrayal in Gaines's Work

The horrendous events in Charleston, SC, last week at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church cannot be erased from our collective consciousness. Following the attack on the church and the killing of nine innocent African American victims, debates over a continued symbol of hate and prejudice arose. That symbol, of course, is the Confederate Battle Flag which flew at full staff over the Confederate Soldier Monument near the State House. The pole lacks a pulley system, and in order to remove the flag, it has to be approved by two thirds of the state legislature. Approval by any part of the state legislature appears absurd, but two thirds means that nothing can be done to the flag in question unless sixty six percent of the elected officials in the legislature approve it. The flag stands for the South, yes, but it stands for the South that oppressed and kept others in chains to benefit its own avaricious desires. It stands for a South that labeled Africans and later African Americans as chattel, property that could be treated however the owner saw fit. It stands for a Jim Crow society that decided "separate but equal" accommodations for African and Anglo Americans. It stands for a reminder of a South that continually saw African Americans and others as inferior to themselves and strove to maintain its power through violence, intimidation, and coercion. 

For today's post, I just want to show a couple of examples where the Confederate Battle Flag appears in Gaines's works and the characters's reactions to it. Reading through Gaines's works, the flag flies above the courthouse in Bayonne, and various characters encounter it. In "The Sky Is Gray," the eight year old narrator James does not know what to make of the flag. As his mother, Octavia, walks him through the streets of the town, he stares up at the courthouse and sees the flag at the top. "We come up to the courthouse, and I see the flag waving there," James says, "This flag ain't like the one we got at school. This one here ain't got but a handful of stars. One at school got a big pile of stars--one for every state" (93). Even though James doesn't realize its meaning, he differentiates the flag from the United States flag that hangs in the classroom in the quarters. James does not comprehend that the flag represents hatred, oppression, and subjugation and flies as a symbol of what some wished still existed. This is James's only contact with the Confederate Battle Flag in "The Sky is Gray." 

Grant, in A Lesson before Dying, discusses the flag in more specific terms. From the very beginning of the novel, the segregation of African Americans and whites becomes evident. Speaking about Jefferson's trial, Grant comments that Miss Emma "never got up once to get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement" (3). When grant comes to the courthouse in Bayonne himself, he describes it by saying, "A statue of a Confederate soldier stood to the right of the walk that led up to the courthouse door. Above the head of the statue, national, state, and Confederate flags flew on long metal poles" (68-69). Grant understands what the Confederate flag represents because he has lived in its shadow everyday of his life. Like Miss Emma, he must go to the fountain and bathroom in the courthouse's basement, he must wait endlessly for Henri Pichot to speak with him, and he must endure other forms of subjugation as well. Grant knows these things, but he feels he does not have any power to change them. Through teaching Jefferson, and his own students, he works to rectify the situation and to escape the shadow casts by the flag that waves above Bayonne's courthouse. 

Earlier in the novel, Grant recalls leading the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States flag in his classroom in the quarters. There, the students stood and addressed the Stars and Stripes. "The flag," Grant recalled, "hung limp from a ten-foot bamboo pole in the corner of the white picket fence that surrounded the church" (emphasis added 33). The key words here are "hung limp." While the Confederate flag, and others, "flew" above the courthouse, indicating movement and agency, the flag hanging on the bamboo pole along the fence only hangs limply, not moving at all. Past the limp flag, Grant "could see smoke rising from the chimneys in the quarter, and beyond the houses and the chimneys [he] could hear the tractors harvesting sugarcane in the fields" (33). As the flag dangles, listlessly, on the pole, Grant sees beyond it to the people who occupy the quarters and to their impending displacement to agricultural expansion. In this instance, the flag appears powerless because it does not move, failing to provide power to those who pledge their allegiance to it.  

There are other instances where the Confederate Battle Flag appears in Gaines's works, but the ones discussed above are two of the main ones. Gaines does not delve into the historical context of the flag, he lets it wave above the courthouse as a symbol of what African Americans had to endure in the South before, during, and after the Civil War. He confronts the flag, and the past it represents, in his writing by showing that those who lived under its reign survived with dignity and power. Others, like Frank Laurent and Miss Jane's mistress, pleaded for it to remain. As Miss Jane's mistress watched the Confederate soldiers march away from her plantation, she cried, “Sweet, precious blood of the South; sweet precious blood of the South” (5).  She does not want her way of life to end, and those who argue that the Confederate Battle Flag represents a heritage of the South, as Lindsey Graham notes in the clip below, resemble her in some way. 

The clip is from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight where he discusses the flag and the debate surrounding its presence in South Carolina and the South in general.  What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comments below.    

Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson before Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. "The Sky is Gray." Bloodline. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. 83-117. Print.