My Own Southern Heritage

"Southern heritage" seems to be all the rage (in every sense of that word) in these days following the unspeakable murders in Charleston last month. Seems what I consider my Southern heritage isn't the same as what the media or folks waving that awful flag think it to be.

My Southern heritage can be found in places like Atlanta History Center, or Chickamauga Battlefield, Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, Memphis' Graceland, or New Orleans' Preservation Hall. It can be found in the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains, the Outer Banks, and the Okefenokee Swamp and in the quilts of the women of Gee's Bend, Alabama, the baskets of Sea Island, Georgia, and the dulcimers, fiddles, and banjos of Appalachia.

And since nobody tells a tale like my Southern brothers and sisters, I'm proud of my story-spinning heritage from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, Thomas Wolfe, Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Anne Porter, William Faulkner, Maya Angelou, and, yes, Margaret Mitchell. William Styron, Alice Walker, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, James Dickey, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty - yep, I'll claim all of them as part of my Southern heritage. Writers from the South or writing from a Southern perspective are the stars of American literature, past and present. Mine. Claimin' 'em. By the way, I get my current Southern storytelling fix from The Bitter Southerner. It tells more about the South than any sound-bite media fascination or hateful racist hell-bent on shooting up or burning a church.

My Southern heritage is wrap-around porches, broad-leafed magnolias with punchbowl-sized blossoms, fried chicken and watermelon, Co-Cola and Goo-Goo Clusters, pallets on sleeping porches, and family, family, family. It's y'all and yes, ma'am. It's humidity, lightning bugs, and flip-flops in the summer and going crazy over a few flakes of snow in the winter. It's laughing until you cry. A lot. It's hospitality and hugs and that double-edged sword, "Bless your heart" - for everyone, whatever your color or gender/sexual preference, economic background, education, or religious affiliation. And of course, "How's yo' mama?"

The Gresham-Weed family cemetery right on busy Chamblee-Tucker Road in Atlanta, as well as the Nicholson-Pardue cemetery behind the farmhouse in Henrietta, Tennessee, are both a part of my Southern heritage. Of course, some of the men resting there fought for the South in the Civil War, though to my knowledge they were all poor dirt farmers, not slave-holders. Not excusing their participation - it was what they did at that time in history, may they rest in peace. Many more, however, served the United States in the World Wars and beyond, fighting for the US flag.

Certainly, slavery and racism are part of my Southern heritage, too. Many other parts of the United States share in that history, but this isn't about them; it's about my particular part of the country. I will own it. I will learn from it. I will check myself if tempted to place blame on an entire race or class of people, even poor (and rich) Southern white folks, since only God knows what's in people's hearts.

So. I'm telling you that the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is not a symbol of my Southern heritage. For me and many, many people born and raised in the South, it represents sinful oppression and a lost, really bad, cause. There were many flags of the Confederacy, but this is the one that is used by the KKK, folks opposed to Civil Rights in the 1950s and 60s (and, it seems, beyond), and is proudly waved by crazy, wild-eyed racists and people bent on causing evil. So, no, not my Southern heritage.

As a proud daughter of the South and what I believe is my true Southern heritage, I resent that rich legacy being hijacked by the folks still fighting the Civil War or the media constantly shining a spotlight on the least educated or most hateful among us. Most Southerners didn't build this region using slave labor, so dig deeper on that story if you don't know it. Thanks to the genius and hard work of both blacks and whites, the South is a culturally diverse powerhouse, with unsurpassed scenic beauty and a knack for telling a good story and singing a great song.

Most importantly, my Southern heritage is a piece of a great American crazy-quilt - a piece I love, but just one of many squares. When it comes to citizenship, I am an American, y'all.