Standing in front of his small, African-American congregation at Summerville, Ga.’s, Hemphill AME Zion Church on Sunday morning, the Rev. Solomon Missouri read a letter he had written the night before.
Missouri, who drives from his Atlanta home on weekends to preach at the church, heard from a member of his 30-person church on Saturday that a Confederate Battle Flag hung in front of the county courthouse. He said he didn’t believe the news and drove to the corner of Washington Street and Martha Berry Highway to confirm what he heard.
“The flag must come down,” he told the congregation the next day, reading his letter. “If this sign is a part of your collective heritage, then your heritage bears the stench of oppression. If this sign evokes feelings of pride than (sic) your pride is indeed a sin.”
Missouri dropped a copy of his letter off at the office of Chattooga County Commissioner Jason Winters, who at the beginning of April let the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans fly the battle flag at the courthouse in honor of Confederate Veterans Month in Georgia. Winters told the Times Free Press two weeks ago that he would consider removing the flag if it caused controversy, but he did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment.
Missouri filed a complaint this week with the Georgia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He also gave a copy of his letter to Harry Harvey, the first black mayor of Summerville, the county seat of Chattooga.
“I do agree with some of those concerns and some of the feelings he has,” Harvey said after reading Missouri’s note.
A Confederate flag flies above the Chattooga County Courthouse in Summerville, Ga.After articles about the flag ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Times Free Press, Harvey, 65, told Winters he did not like seeing public property decorated with the battle flag, which Confederate veterans voted to make their recognized symbol after the Civil War.
Harvey said Winters is still debating whether to continue using that symbol.
“This will be resolved,” Harvey said. “I certainly hope it will.”
Stan Hammond, commander of the local chapter of the Sons, said he has not heard any complaints about the flag. Despite criticism from the NAACP, Hammond said the symbol is not racist, that it honors the 900-1,100 Chattooga County soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.
“We have not heard anything from anybody,” he said. “No real negative feedback on the whole thing.”
But Missouri, 33, said placing the flag on county property is out of line. Growing up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., he said, he watched members of the Ku Klux Klan march as a child. The father of one of his church friends was a Klansman.
His parents told him to let racial hatred slide off him, to stay positive. He can absorb cuts, such as the white classmate in his college theology courses who used the N-word. But he said he still can’t believe the flag would fly on courthouse property.
That didn’t even happen in Tuscaloosa.
“That, for me, was more troubling than its existence,” he said of the flag. “I expect some of those things. But I do not expect the flag to be flying in a place where we seek communal justice.”
Located two blocks south, he said he can see the courthouse from the steps of his church, a building that already reminds him often about the racial history of the country, the county. It was there, he said, where local black children went to school before integration.
Contact Staff Writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6476.