In the fall of 1955, some 15 months after the Supreme Court declared that segregated schools in the United States were illegal; five students at the University of Missouri wondered why a campus fraternity would fly a huge confederate flag from a pole in front of its house.
It needed to be torn down the group decided, and one Friday night before a football game, it was done.
Yes, it was foolhardy. And no, it didn’t accomplish anything since the fraternity, whose “spiritual father” was Robert E. Lee, had a trunkful of these flags and eager members that now would guard the banner with their lives. But at the time and place the act of taking down the flag seemed important. It was a symbol.
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Symbols have meaning. They are things or ideas we use to connect to and understand each other. Symbols become our myths and part of our daily life. It is how we come to terms with our own world.
All this is written in the context of a suggestion by Park Forest Mayor John A. Ostenburg that the village should consider re-naming streets in the Lincolnwood section of town; streets honoring Confederate generals “Stonewall” Jackson, Jubal Early, Lee and the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Ostenburg’s idea comes on the heels of the violence in Charlottesville and the mounting controversy over statues, their symbolic meaning and the myths they create.
Ostenburg set up a committee to decide if such a move is even possible and noted that changing the name of a street is not easy. If the village decides to re-do the names, the U.S. Postal Service would have to change all addressees on the street. Residents would have to change their address listing and almost all their identification information.
Those street names were problematic from the start. In 1958, some 10 years after the village was founded, there was a similar move to re-name those streets, which went nowhere.
When symbols are challenged we react. In Charlottesville it was with violence over statues, in Park Forest it is with invective on Facebook.
As of the middle of last week, the site about growing up in Park Forest had 156 comments on Ostenburg’s proposal. Of those, only five seemed to support the idea. In essence, most of those who posted a comment thought the idea had no value, was not needed and was just another knee-jerk woozy liberal idea.
It is, however, worth a tiny discussion.
The issue that we cannot escape has always been the enslavement of a people and its terrible aftermath.
The symbols are the homage paid in statues, memorials and street names linked to the “Southern Cause.” Some insist the Civil War was about commerce. I think if true it was commerce based on slavery. Some claim it was a battle over state’s rights. I think if true it was the rights of the slave owners who were a small fraction of the population of the Confederacy, but with the power to control the destiny of millions.
While we can discuss the merits of renaming streets in Park Forest, there is little middle ground in the debate over the removal or destruction of statues honoring the Confederacy. Right now it is enough that there is a rigorous examination of the subject. The symbols on pedestals will not escape our attention.
As for the street names, I do not care what the trustees decide. The more important thing is that the question of propriety has been raised.
Jerry Shnay can be reached at [email protected]