An open letter to the Wood County Fair Board
The parading of the so-called Confederate flag past the image of Abraham Lincoln in the Capitol on Wednesday should be a wake-up call to all. I wrote to the Wood County Fair Board several years ago protesting vendors selling the so-called Confederate flag at the Wood County Fair, and received no response. The vendor was still there in 2019. I am asking the Fair Board to disavow any connection with this vendor or the marketing of this flag.
I say “so-called” Confederate flag, because the flag that is paraded by supporters of this and other vendors is not any iteration of the Confederate national flag or battle flag. It is the Second Confederate Navy Jack. A simple Wikipedia search under “Flags of the Confederate States of America” shows images and gives the history of the flags of the states that seceded from the United States of America.
If one scrolls down to “Controversy,” the history of the Second Confederate Navy Jack is laid out. It is, in its essence, not a representation of the Civil War South— the South that lost the war to leave the Union— but a representative of post Reconstruction White Supremacy and Jim Crow era racism that is still rampant, unbelievably, in a third of the population in today’s 21st Century.
This flag has been cemented into our Popular Culture as a harmless image of Southern heritage by such icons as the Dukes of Hazzard and “Gone with the Wind.” However, the heritage it truly represents is that of repression of People of Color, plain and simple. When you allow the Confederate 2nd Navy Jack flag to be flown and sold at the Wood County Fair, you may as well emblazon the letters KKK across it, because that is the era and the heritage that vendor and all who embrace this flag are promoting.
Please consider an all-out ban of this flag in any commercial or official use at the Wood County Fair or on its grounds at any time. Thank you.
Jean Geist
Bowling Green
