A History Lesson for Kevin Seefried
Kevin Seefried has been sentenced to three years in prison for his part in the January 6, 2020 riot at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Seefried carried a Confederate flag through the capitol on that day and was photographed numerous times, most famously in a hallway that featured paintings of Charles Sumner and John Calhoun.
It will go down as one of the most famous (or perhaps infamous) photographs from the attempted insurrection.
According to The Washington Post, “Seefried said he did not intend to represent white supremacy or insurrection, merely a spirit of protest, by bringing to Washington a Confederate flag that had previously hung outside his home.”
His lawyers argued that, ‘He was taught that the flag was a symbol of an idealized view of southern life and southern heritage. Lacking an education beyond the ninth grade and lacking even average intellectual capacity, Mr. Seefried did not appreciate the complex and, for many, painful, history behind the Confederate battle flag.”
Thirty-six months in prison is plenty of time to do some reading and reflection for someone who claims to be completely ignorant of the history and symbolism of the Confederate flag.
If I were the judge, I would force Mr. Seefried to review this shortened curriculum followed by a test to determine whether he gets released.
Start with John Coski’s wonderful book that covers the long history of the Confederate flag beginning with the Civil War. It does a particularly good job of thoroughly exploring the competing meanings of the flag at different points in time.
Given Mr. Seefried’s claimed ignorance of the flag’s racial overtones, I would focus specifically on its use as a symbol of “massive resistance” during the civil rights era.
In 1956, just after the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public schools, the state of Georgia chose to redesign its state flag to include the Confederate battle flag.
Students at the high school and college levels regularly rallied against integration around the Confederate flag.
There is a reason why white Americans chose to embrace the Confederate flag during this period as opposed to any number of other symbols. It rallied whites around a common message and sent a clear message to the Black community.
The flag was present at marches large and small, including the famous Selma to Montgomery March in 1965.
And when the marchers arrived in Montgomery, the flag was flying over the State Capitol Building.
The Confederate flag was central to the culture of white supremacy and Jim Crow from the beginning. Consider the lynching of Will Echols in Mississippi in 1920:
On September 12, 1920, armed white men abducted a black prisoner from the Clarke County jail in Quitman, Mississippi. The captive, Will Echols, had been transferred from a neighboring county "for safekeeping" after the Mississippi Supreme Court stayed his execution. Convicted of murdering a white night watchman at a local lumber plant, Echols narrowly avoided the gallows when another black convict confessed to the crime. Less than forty-eight hours later, Echols's bullet-riddled corpse hung from a pole alongside a rural highway. Before pumping dozens of rounds into their victim, the mob reportedly shouted, "To Hell with the Supreme Court," and forced Echols to kiss a Confederate battle flag.
Almost 100 years later Dylann Roof walked into a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina and murdered nine people. Roof identified closely with the white supremacist roots of the Confederate flag, whose history justified and encouraged his attempt to bring about a race war.
A few years later white nationalists showed up to Charlottesville, Virginia to defend a monument of Robert E. Lee and intimidate African Americans and Jews. Their actions resulted in the death of Heather Heyer.
The presence of Confederate and Nazi flags was, once again, no accident.
Mr. Seefried expects us to believe that his embrace of the Confederate was an accident, that it had nothing to do with its well documented history of white supremacy and violence.
Regardless of whether this is true, he will now forever be tied to this symbol of hate.
I have really come to like your Substack site. Today’s article was of particular interest, as I mentioned much of it in my book “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond.” Eventually, I will get my Substack up and running. Have a great weekend and stay safe.
Thanks for this excellent news. We can hope Seefried will use the time to reduce his claimed ignorance.