The Flag and the Fury

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, History, Documentary, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2020

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying. A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days before that, it coming down would have seemed impossible. Shima Oliaee dives into the story behind this de-flagging: a journey involving a clash of histories, designs, families, and even cheerleading. This episode was reported and produced by Shima Oliaee. To read or listen to Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Heavy/Kiese-Laymon/9781501125669.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we start, this podcast contains a fair amount of strong language.
0:06.1	Wait, you're listening.
0:07.2	Okay.
0:08.4	All right.
0:09.7	Okay.
0:11.0	All right.
0:12.7	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:15.4	Radio Lab.
0:15.9	From W. N. Y.
0:17.9	C.
0:18.8	See?
0:19.1	Yeah.
0:23.8	I pledged. W. N. Y. S. See? Yeah. I pledge to never be passive, patriotic, or grateful in the face of American abuse.
0:29.9	I pledge to always thoughtfully bite the self-righteous American hand that thinks it's feeding us.
0:35.3	I pledge that white Mississippians and white Americans will never dictate who
0:38.8	I choose to be or what symbols I choose to imbue with meaning. I pledge to not allow American
0:45.1	ideals of patriotism and masculinity to make me hard, abusive, generic, and brittle. I pledge to
0:52.1	messily love our people and myself better than I did yesterday. I pledge to messily love our people
0:54.6	and myself better than I did yesterday.
0:57.7	I pledge to be the kind of free
0:59.0	that makes justly winning and gently losing possible.
1:02.8	To never ever confuse cowardice with courage.
	...

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