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Last Updated: Feb 6th, 2009 - 13:21:29 |
Heretofore, any desire I had to hang an American flag in my front yard was a persistent urge to hang it upside down. Flipping the flag is done in times of emergency to signal distress – which is precisely the political message I would’ve intended to send. But in this post-9/11 era and during the Bush administration’s war on terror, I feared that flying the flag upside down could be considered an act of treason. And so being a wife, a mother of four and a working woman, I decided to avoid the drama. I had no interest in being a test case in free speech. I just didn’t hang anything at all. But on Jan. 20, 2009, I will hang a flag in my front yard for the first time in my life and the flag will be flying upright.
I’ll be flying the flag that has remained folded in a military triangle since the day it was handed to my mother at my grandfather’s graveside. My grandfather, Clodie L. Freeman, served during World War II. Grand Daddy always had stories to tell us kids about his days growing up in North Carolina. My favorite one was the one that made us laugh the hardest. Grand dad said when he was growing up White folks would call all the Black men ‘boy’ regardless of their age. When granddad became a man himself, he told us one day Mr. Charlie called him boy and he had had just about enough of that. So he looked Mr. Charlie right in the eye and told him…”Mr. Charlie…don’t you call me boy…you can call me MISTER boy.”
Even at a young age I could see the humor in that story. And, of course, I grew to learn more and more from that story and about my grandfather, the older I got. It showed me how he used humor as a tool to soften the sting of humiliation handed out to southern Blacks on a daily basis.
I’ll never know what clever, poignant thing Clodie L. Freeman might have said about
a Black man being elected president of the United States of America…but I know the flag, dedicated to the military service he gave this country despite the indignities he was subjected to, will fly proudly in the breeze on that magnificent winter day.
Verna Avery-Brown, former Washington Bureau Chief for Pacifica Radio, lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.
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