One hundred and forty 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 since slavery has been 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. 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”. Due to racism that is still occuring in parts of the United States, it seems that the civil war never ended. Despite the peace and revolution that has spread the world after the war, there are some places in the Southern states of America 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 boys around his age because of a confederate flag that he kept on the back of his truck, provides a perfect example. The story takes place in the town of Guthrie, Kentucky, a small Southern town which provides as a perfect example of a place stuck in the past, in a time when blacks and whites were not considered equal. 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”, and are filled with trashy white Southern men with the urge to start a fight. 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 in these towns are for “white power”. In fact, according to the man in the biker bar that Horwitz interviewed, there are not very many. But 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. By filling the pool with dirt, Maria avoided the conflict as much as she could. If she had taken a stand against the racist customers and made it clear that it is a free country and any customers who payed the fee were allowed to swim in the public pool, she could’ve done something to help. 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’s life was taken without warning five weeks after his wife had given birth to twins because of a confederate 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. If there weren’t still white supremists aimed at flaunting the power of their race, this type of assumption most likely wouldn’t have been made. 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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