Now a days, one hundred and fourty four years after the civil war, we like to think that we live in a world where there is no discrimination, no violence or hate based on the different shades of our skin. We like to think that now that slavery has ended and freedom has been legally granted to African Americans all over America, that we can suddenly all coexist in peace without any unfair prejudice. And in most places in America, this is true. No longer do African American citizens have to get up from their seats on the bus in order for a white person to sit and rest their legs. No longer do public schools have two separate drinking fountains, one with a label that says “colored” and one with a label that says “whites”. But despite the peace and revolution that has spread the world after the war, there are some places in the American South where the struggle between races still continues.
“Dying for Dixie” by Tony Horwitz, a story in which a white teenage boy is shot by four black teenage boys around his age because of a confederate flag that he kept on the back of his truck, provides a perfect example of the types of places in which it seems that the war is still going on. The true story takes place in the small town of Guthrie, Kentucky. Horwitz describes biker bars in this town that have Martin Luther King Jr. day celebrations with a “Thank God for James Earl Ray Party” and a proclomation of “Fuck Martin Luther King Jrs B.Day”. When Horwitz interviewed some of the men at the biker bar about the town, one of the men replied “We got a few people standing up for white rights. The rest are pussies who let niggers trample all over them. Like those boys who shot Westerman the other day..You’ve got your KKK and your BBB-that’s Badass Black Brothers. Two sides of the same coin. If they want war, come on.” This very attitude is what the father of the murder victim Michael Westerman is talking about when he states that in their town it feels like the war is still going on.
This does not mean that the majority of people are for “white power”. In fact, according to the man in the biker bar that Horwitz interviewed, there are not very many. But even just a few of the strong willed white supremists can be enough to start a conflict. A good example of the racial conflict in this small town is the pool at the Holiday Motel. This small run down motel in Gurthie once had a public swimming pool available to anybody staying at the motel. One hot summer day a few black children paid their money and jumped in the pool. “It was like we sent an electrical charge through the water” said Maria Eskridge, the owner of the motel. Once the black children had gotten in, all the whites got out as quickly as possible. They complained to Eskridge to tell the blacks to leave. Eskridge, not having a strong opinion on the matter and not wanting to start more trouble, ignored the complaints. As the complaining from the white residents continued to get worse, Eskridge and her husband simply filled the pool with pond dirt so that nobody would be able to swim. This solution shows that althouugh there were not too many people strongly against people of different races, there were many people who didn’t care too much either way, but didn’t do much to help. This is one of the contributing factors to the continued conflict. If the power of the white supremists is strong enough and the people in the middle are doing nothing to help the situation, the power of discrimination will become powerful enough to take over the small town.
It wasn’t long before the issue of racism and prejudice became a matter of life or death. Michael Westerman was shot by four black teenagers because of a confedarate flag waving from the back of his truck. According to Michael’s own wife, the flag was there simply because it was red and matched the details on his truck. But living in a town where racism was still alive, the shooters assumed that it was a racial statement aimed at them. Maybe slavery has ended, maybe we are finally all legally thought of as equal, but there will always be people who break the law, and it’s these people who keep the war alive in parts of America.
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