Few communities possess deeper southern roots than Lexington, Va.
Nestled in the Shenandoah Valley in southwest Virginia, Lexington's history stretches back to colonial days, but it is a Southern town through and through. The antebellum homes and narrow streets evoke visions of young men in straw hats and young ladies in hoop skirts. It is a town that exudes Southern gentility.
What’s the point?
Southern pride doesn’t require an embrace of the Confederate Battle Flag.
It is also a town that, like the rest of Virginia, sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Reminders of Lexington's Southern soul abound. A statue of Robert E. Lee's horse, Traveler, sits in front of the Episcopal church founded by the former general. Lee and Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson are buried there. Lexington is also home to two colleges historically tied to the Confederacy. One, formerly Washington Academy, renamed itself Washington and Lee University after the defeated general served as its president following the war.
Just across Lecher Avenue sits Virginia Military Institute, a service academy-style school that notes with great pride the participation of its cadets in a well-known Civil War battle at nearby New Market Gap. Eight cadets were killed in the fray in May 1864, one of the South's last victories over Union forces.
Every May, the VMI cadets who died at New Market are honored with a ceremony and parade on campus. Under the watchful eye of Jackson's statue, wreaths are laid at the memorial to the fallen cadets, who were, really, just boys. It is a solemn, moving event, as the roll of the assembled companies is called until no answer is returned.
But here's what you don't see at VMI, or at Washington and Lee, or in fact, on any public land in Lexington: The Confederate Battle Flag. In 2011, the City Council voted 4-1 to ban the display of all flags on public property, save the U.S., Virginia and city banners. It's not a stretch to say the ordinance specifically targeted the display of the battle flag (often erroneously called the Confederate flag) on public property.
The vote itself, of course, was quite controversial. Contemporary news reports indicate a rally at a city park and subsequent march to city hall produced a veritable sea of battle flags. Before a packed council chamber, most residents who spoke opposed the ban, saying it would inhibit free speech and deny the community's Southern heritage. But the ordinance passed and remains in place today.
That's not say that there are no Confederate battle flags in Lexington. The ordinance cannot ban the display flags of any kind on private property, nor does it affect the display of the battle flag on T-shirts, bumper stickers, beer can koozies or halter tops. Anyone in this rural Virginia town is free to display the flag on his own property.
It's instructive to note that on a recent visit to Lexington that included the New Market commemoration at VMI, Confederate battle flags were no where to be seen, even at private homes or businesses.
Lexington residents walk a tightrope, searching for ways to honor the positive aspects of Southern culture -- courage, loyalty and civility -- while acknowledging the South's great humanitarian crime of slavery and that institution's continuing legacy of racial oppression.
It is a conflict felt by any thinking person of Southern heritage.
Even without the flag, Lexington is the epitome of a Southern town. Nothing can erase its historic links to the Old South or the pride residents feel for their heritage. Lexington proves that Southern pride does not require waving the battle flag in the faces of those who see it as an emblem of one of the great evils of mankind.
In fact, Lexington proves that the flag itself is irrelevant to Southern culture. Few places have a stronger claim to Southern pride. If the battle flag doesn't equate to Southern pride in Lexington, it doesn't do so anywhere else, either.
Those who assign the South's positive attributes to an emblem as divisive as the battle flag do a disservice to their own Southern heritage and insult the memories of those who fought to unite the nation. For proof, just look to Lexington.
Commentary on 05/28/2016