Imagine that you were a slave in 1865. You are outside in Mississippi with temperatures of 100 degrees and higher. You can feel that your back is bleeding from the lashing you got from your master but the feeling is so numb to it that you can’t even feel the pain. To your right, there is your children doing as you are: in the field chopping down sugar cane. They have no expression; no fear or even sadness in their eyes. Just emptiness. To your left, there is a big house with a flag at the top of it. There are only two things that you can feel right now: the hope that the future your children will have will be better than what you have had to deal with and the feeling of hate you have towards that flag.

Now jump forward 150 years to today and you can see your descendants walking free. Just as you hoped they would. Nevertheless, then you see that that flag waiving high in the air. The flag that said you were only 3/4^th of a person; the flag that gave you no rights; the flag that said you were PROPERTY. How would you feel?

The Confederate flag has been flown for years showing the history and pride of America and what it has gone though. However, if you think back to what the flag was actually represented in the 1800’s, you could see that it showed the things that African American people had to go through while being held as slaves to the white man. This flag doesn’t represent the trials American has endured. This flag, the Confederate Flag, reminds African American people how life used to be; the beatings, the hard labor that sometimes killed your ancestors, and the rights that were nowhere to be found. The Stars and Bars should not be flown in any public place or any businesses. If someone would want to have the flag flown at their house, I think that would fine. This is still America and everyone has their rights, but I do not believe that it is fair for a business or cooperation should fly such a flag where there could be people who are offended by it. Some people have taken action against the Confederate battle flag. More specifically, American activist, Bree Newsome, climbed a flagpole in South Carolina on June 27, 2015. This act showed that people were beginning to stand up and do something rather than just talk about taking the flag down.

Millions of slaves were brutally beaten and treated with no rights. And the people who did these things to those African Americans stood strongly being the Confederate Flag. If you were in the shoes of a slave in the 1800’s and saw the Confederate flag being flown high right next to the American Flag, how would you feel?