Dr. Bradley Skelcher is a professor emeritus of history at Delaware State University after serving the university over 27 years. He has written and given lectures on the history of African Americans in Delaware. He resides in Smyrna.
The recent decision by three members of the Georgetown Town Council to provide a $24,750 grant to the Georgetown Historical Society for projects at its Nutter D. Marvel Carriage Museum is meeting considerable opposition.
The historical society displays a monument at the Marvel Museum that is dedicated to Delawareans who fought for the Confederacy and to Confederate sympathizers like Gov. William Ross of Seaford. Ross fled the country during the Civil War out of fear, given his Confederate sympathies. He also was an enslaver. The Delaware Grays chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans sponsored the monument in 2007.
A Confederate flag flies over the monument. This flag became a symbol of resistance against public school integration following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Delaware played an important role in overturning Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.
The Confederate flag flown at the Georgetown Historical Society monument originated with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. During the emergence of “Jim Crow” laws and state constitutions in the South during the late 19th century, the Confederate battle flag became a symbol of attempted Southern redemption from Northern military and political rule during Reconstruction following the Civil War. Many Southern resisters and former Confederates formed paramilitary terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camelia. They terrorized African Americans and northerners, many of whom were African Americans backed by the Army, there to reconstruct the former Confederate States. The members of those organizations felt that they were defending their Southern honor. The Confederate battle flag became the symbol of that resistance.
The federal government passed Enforcement Laws of 1870 and 1871 that banned terrorist organizations like the KKK. Federal intervention was needed when voters were threatened during voting. The federal district attorney in Wilmington requested the Marines to stop the violence against African American voters in Smyrna and Odessa during the 1872 elections.
Battle flag becomes a symbol of terror
The United Daughters of the Confederacy took an active role in this attempted-redemption period. They fabricated a revisionist history of the American Civil War that concluded the Confederacy lost the war, but that it had been a noble cause to preserve the Southern way of life. They created the “Lost Cause” history of the Civil War that eventually prevailed in Southern history textbooks provided by the United Daughters organization. They also chose the “proper” flag to be flown as a symbol of the Lost Cause, the one we see now at the Confederate monument in Georgetown. This flag was chosen from many that had been used by Confederates during that era.
The 1915 D.W. Griffith film, “The Birth of a Nation,” glorified the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction and led to the birth of the second Ku Klux Klan. Members chose this Confederate battle flag as its symbol, and it is associated with the Klan to this day. They were so strong in 1925 that they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., without covering their faces. This new KKK targeted immigrants, African Americans, Catholics and Jews, progressive women and union organizers. Members even murdered my grandfather in 1922 for his union and progressive activities.
This version of the Klan came to an end when Klansman David Stephenson was convicted for murder after he had brutally raped a young woman who died. It brought into question the KKK and its claims of protecting Protestant, native-born Americans from what they perceived as evil stemming from foreign communists who had infiltrated America. More people came to see the Klan for what it was and that the flag was its symbol of terror.
The Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate flag were again revived by the Dixiecrats as a symbol of resistance to integration following World War II. Following the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the Confederate flag symbolized resistance to integration of public schools.
In Delaware, Ethel Belton and Shirley Bulah sued the state of Delaware to integrate the all-White schools in their respective communities. Their cases, Belton et al. v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart, 1952, resulted in a court order to immediately integrate schools in Hockessin and Claymont. Delaware appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court that joined others in Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. The court held that segregation was inherently unequal and ordered the desegregation of the nation’s public schools.
This led to a White backlash. Following the Brown decision, the school board in Milford decided to begin integrating the all-White high school. In reaction, White citizens under the leadership of Bryan Bowles, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, boycotted the high school if African American students were in attendance. The boycott spread throughout southern Delaware. Eventually, the school board was replaced with segregationists, who expelled the African American students.
Return Day carriage boycott
This year, the Democratic Party in Delaware is calling for all candidates who run in this election to walk during the Return Day parade in Georgetown that follows the elections. Return Day brings the winning and losing candidates together after an election to bury a symbolic hatchet.
The Marvel Museum, owned by the Georgetown Historical Society, provides carriages for use in the parade by politicians. The state of Delaware once provided a grant to the museum until state Sen. Trey Paradee, D-Dover, led the movement to stop funding, which the state did in 2019.
Since the historical society refuses to remove the Confederate flag, the call is to boycott riding in the carriages.
Even Tom (William) Marvel opposes the Confederate display and the flag. He is the grandson of Nutter Marvel, who founded the museum. He said his grandfather would not have approved.
I support the carriage boycott and call for the Georgetown Town Council to rescind the funding of the Georgetown Historical Society. The Confederate monument with its Confederate flag symbolizes the enslavement of millions and the terror imposed upon generations that followed. The symbol of the Confederacy and the monument should no longer receive public funding.
