There’s a raggedy American flag hanging outside my house. I know I should take it down, but I’m afraid. For the past 15 years, I lived in various apartments in upstate New York. After accepting a new job at the University of Mississippi this summer, I moved into a university-owned house down the road from William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford. Nothing about the new house or neighborhood surprised me more than the American and old Magnolia flags hanging in front of neighboring colonials, ranches, and bungalows. I was born and raised in Jackson, just three hours south of Oxford, but I’d never seen a Magnolia flag before. The flag, which was the state’s official banner from 1861 to 1865, has one white star in a square of blue in the left corner and one strip of red on the right. There is no prominent confederate battle emblem in the corner like there is in our current state flag, which was adopted in 1894. There is simply a magnolia tree floating like a nappy green afro in the middle of white space. On my first day in the neighborhood, all the green afro flags made me think my white neighbors were what my family called “them good white folk.” Before I found out the Magnolia flag was actually Mississippi’s flag of secession, I imagined these particular good white …show more content…
Actually, it’s far worse. It reminds me of what we black folk have survived and witnessed at the hands of white folk hiding behind the American flag for centuries. Unlike the other flags in the neighborhood, the one flying outside my house might be the dustiest, most worn out American flag I’ve seen in my life: the blue bleeds purple; the red fades pink; and the white wants desperately to be the color of bad banana pudding. There are two long rips on the top, and a more significant rip across the bottom bar. The flag rarely blows in the wind. Depending on the breeze, it leans slowly left or right, but mostly it just slumps, looking neither prideful nor