Tennessee, of all places, appears to have acknowledged what Black and brown folks have long seen clearly: the Confederate flag is nothing more than a pure symbol of racism.
Fast forward to last Friday, when the Tennessee court of criminal appeals granted a new trial for a Black man convicted while sitting in a courtroom adorned with Confederate symbols—including a Confederate flag and a portrait of Jefferson Davis—an infamous slaveholder and the president of the Confederate States, who once said in a speech in 1860 that slavery was “a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves,” adding “We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race by the Creator, and from cradle to grave, our government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority.”
The 31-page decision, which reversed a 2020 lower court ruling that denied Tim Gilbert’s request for a new trial, cited the power of the racist symbols and what they conveyed about the rule of law.
“The flag displayed in the jury room is no different,” the court ruled. “Its original purpose was to ‘knit the loyalty’ of those in the Confederate states ‘to a flag’ that conveyed the political ideals of the Confederacy.”