Author Note: I wanted to write a story set from the perspective of someone who hasn't realized that their family was part of a hate group. I wanted the story to be set from that perspective so that there is hints of racism but like the character you never fully know. I wanted to convey the feeling of someone who doesn't know exactly what racism is because he is in his own bubble, but when he steps out side of it he realizes that everything he learned was wrong.
I was born into a very small town and a small family in the south, I had a mother, a father, and an older brother. Life was good when I was a kid, my family would eat dinner together every night. My parents would walk John and I to school every day and pick us up afterwards. We would have dinners at the dining table every night and recall our days. After school, sometimes, I would hang out with some kids my age, however some kids I wasn't allowed to interact with. Kind of like how my father would never interact with this one shop owner. I wasn't allowed to shop there either, if I did than I would be yelled at by my father. It was something similar how my father reacted to some of the kids I wanted to play with, they didn’t look like me, but I never saw why he got so mad.
As I started growing up my dad started to become more distant. Nothing I did seemed to be good enough for him, anytime I would get good grades he would just say "That's what you're supposed to do". The only person he seemed to be proud of was my John, the two of them always spent time together. The only time he would ever spend time with me was to lecture me about something I was doing wrong or the people I hung out with. Whether it was playing football, listening to, or going out late at night together. They always wore these matching white outfits together; I didn't recognize them from any things I knew of back then. The only thing I could really compare it to was a hoodie of some sorts.
During my childhood the only person in my life that I knew I can rely on was my mother. For as much as I wished I had my dad’s approval, I had hers. I helped her with dinner, laundry, or cleaning he house. Back then my mom played the role of a traditional housewife. She would walk us to school, she would walk us back home, and have snacks ready and the house would be cleaned. Anytime I was ever struggling with anything at school she would help me through it along with answer any questions I ever had for her. One time I asked her "Mom, where does dad and John go at night" and she responded with "This group that is only for adults". I asked her what the white matching outfits were for and she said, "What they wear I hope you never have to put on like your brother did". I asked her why she was never a part of the group like my brother and father. All she did was shake her head and change the subject. I started to notice patterns with my mom. Mom and my dad started to argue more and more. At the end of my middle school year my mother got sick, she was bed stricken for the rest of the year. She ended up dying over the summer. With her out of my life, I had no one to fall back onto.
I tried to build a relationship with my dad after this, but he never seemed interested. I started to lash out at other teenagers at my school, till one day I had to bring a note home with me. I brought the note home to my father to be signed, I was expecting to be punished but instead, for the first time in years, smiled at me. He then signaled to me to follow him into his office. The place where I was never allowed to enter years before. It was filled with mementos from what appeared to be the civil war, a uniform from a soldier, a gun, a old canteen, and more. These mementos were from my grandfather. He fought in the civil war and ended up dying during it. My father explained to me what the uniform meant for him and our family. My dad said “Son look at this, this is a uniform for a true warrior. Someone who died protecting their way of life and wouldn’t allow any one to push him around.”. My grandfather died protecting what he believed was right during the war. My Dad explained to me that “your ground father died trying to liberate the south from the oppression of the north, the north will try to tell you that the war was over slavery, but that truly isn’t the case son. I just wish more people knew the truth about this, instead of branding my father a traitor over this lie that the north constructed”. After hearing this I felt angry, angry that the north lied about what truly happened, and branded my grandfather a monster in the process. This anger instilled in me a new sense of purpose, I wanted to live up to what my family fought and continues to fight for.
After this my father told me he wanted me to go with him and John to the things that him and my father used to always go to by themselves. This invitation filled me with joy. It made me think that my father was filled with pride towards me, enough to let me into what him and my brother would do without me. After going to the things my brother and father would go to and learning the history of my grandfather, I joined the children of the confederacy. This group confirmed a lot of things my father said. It solidified what I was told and expanded more on what I was believing. There I learned more about the history of the confederates and I wanted to go to college to explain what really happened during the civil war and write something that the north couldn't disprove. I told my dad what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to take the war to the north. I said “Dad, the only way to prove that the south wasn’t in the wrong is to convince them that their way of life is wrong. The only way to do that is by going to a liberal college and learning everything I can do turn the lies they learned against them”. My dad tried to plead to me not to go to the north to do this mission, however I was determined, and nothing would derail me from this task. Finally, I decided to go to a college in Chicago. There I wanted to major in history and get a minor in writing. My father didn’t show up to my goodbye celebration, this hurt me, but I would make him proud when he reads what I write.
When I finally got to the city, I saw a ton of people who didn't look like me or looked like people I have been surrounded by my whole life. This change caught me off guard and startled me frankly. The first thing that changed my belief on what I was taught was my American history class. I remember that when we got to the civil war unit in the class, they explained the confederacies side during the war. I was quick to point out that this was wrong and that the war was never about slavery it was something the north did to try to take blame off themselves. I saw the reactions of everyone in the room and saw on the expression on their faces that something was wrong. The teacher told me to talk to him after class, after the class the professor asked me where I got my ideas from and I told him the "children of the confederacy". He explained to me that “the group I was part of was influenced by the lost cause movement and that the lost cause movement was a way to make the south look like they weren't in the wrong during the civil war. They would use things that evidence didn't support to explain how it wasn't about slavery, for example he told me of a picture that showed a slave in a confederate uniform in the background of a picture. The reason why this is wrong argument was because there is a proof that that person was forced to be part of the confederate army not by choice, and that person was forced to wear the uniform because he worked around the camp.” At first I didn’t believe him, he had to be in the wrong right? My father would never lie to me, he would only tell me the truth…right? This doubtfulness started to fill my head, I wanted to ignore it and justify it that my father loved me and that he wouldn’t have me believe in something that was wrong. But than I remember my mothers reactions to when she would talk about that stuff with me, how she would never say she supported what my father did, but she just went quite. So I started to look more into what my professor said, I went to the nearest library and looked through as much things as I could that revolved around the civil war. Everything was the same, it talked about how the war was over slavery.
I decided to go back to my hometown and look more into it. Once I got there the books had something different to say, they talked about how the war wasn’t over slavery but over independence from the north. However, I was never able to find any evidence that the south was treating their slaves with respect. Everything that was “evidence” was what my professor said was going to be. This revelation made me upset, I finally figured out why my father started taking such a interest in me. The person I got into a fight with was a different race than us, and my father must of took that as a sign that I hated that race. I confronted my dad and explained to him that he was full of lies and so was everything he believed in, he told me to leave and never come back. So I did, I left finished my education in college and became a writer opposing the ideas of the lost cause.
Works Inspired by
Simpson, John A. “The Cult of the ‘Lost Cause.’” Tennessee Historical Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 4, 1975, pp. 350–361. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42623867.
Horton, James O. "Confronting Slavery and Revealing the "Lost Cause"." CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Vol 1998. sirsissuesresearcher, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2250590388?accountid=1977.
Loewen, James W. "Lies Across the South." Southern Exposure, Spring, 2000. sirsissuesresearcher, https://explore.proquest.com/sirsissuesresearcher/document/2250235410?accountid=1977.