Apology in Auburn

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: May 6, 2009

You might have heard about the little dust-up here in Auburn about a week and a half ago when a city councilman removed some decorations from graves in the city’s oldest cemetery.

It would have been just another local issue, except for two things: The councilman, the Rev. Arthur Dowdell, is black, and the decorations were Confederate flags.

I’ve held off discussing this controversy in this space for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that I don’t think there’s any defense for what Dowdell did.

You can read the details of what happened on the Opelika-Auburn News’s web site; the paper has had excellent coverage of this issue from the day it happened.

Well, at a packed City Council meeting last night, Councilman Dowdell did what he should have done from the beginning: He apologized for his actions. (Read the story and see the video here.)

I understand that the Confederate flag is a controversial symbol. I have heard some folks compare it to the Nazi flag, which, because of the ugly history associated with it, Germans can only display in museums.

Germany doesn’t have the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Americans do.

We don’t have to like our neighbors’ choices. But as long as they aren’t hurting others, in America, we do have to respect them.

But however inflammatory the symbol itself may be, its nature is irrelevant in this case.

According to city officials, the gravesites at Pine Hill Cemetery are deeded to residents. The city performs maintenance and upkeep duties at the cemetery, but the graves themselves are private property. On this there can be, and there is, no question.

The city also has an ordinance that regulates the nature of gravesite decorations. But those regulations apply only to the more modern cemeteries, not to Pine Hill, which is the city’s oldest graveyard.

Of course, all the Confederate soldiers in Auburn are buried at Pine Hill; the modern cemeteries weren’t around yet when those soldiers needed them.

So this was the stage for the observation of Confederate Memorial Day, which is a state holiday here in Alabama. Two weeks ago, members of a local historical organization placed small Confederate flags on the graves of the dead Confederate soldiers for the observation, just as they have done for 50 years.

Then Councilman Dowdell arrived.

What happened next? Dowdell didn’t like that the flags were there, so he pulled several of them up, in the presence of two members of the historical organization that had placed them. He broke at least one in half, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and when a reporter asked him about it later, he said of the flag, “It might have snapped itself. If it did, so what? If I had my way, I would have broke them all up and stomped on them and burned them. That flag represents another country, another nation.”

SIDEBAR: Dowdell said last night that he didn’t just go pull up the flags. He said that when he was made aware of the flags in the cemetery, he contacted both the assistant city manager and the mayor of Auburn and was told by both men that they didn’t know who placed the flags on the graves in Pine Hill. Dowdell then said that had he known it was the historical group, “then you probably wouldn’t be here tonight,“ insinuating that he wouldn’t have pulled them up.

Two problems with that. One, in the first story about this controversy, there is no mention of either of Dowdell’s conversations with city officials about who placed the flags. Dowdell says only that he fielded complaints from people at Auburn Junior High School that the flags were up. Two, News reporter Katie Stallcup reported in that first story that Mary Norman, a member of the historical group that placed the flags, was in the cemetery when Dowdell arrived and that Norman said Dowdell asked her who placed the flags in the cemetery.

See what I’m getting at here? END SIDEBAR

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said that people in this country had forgotten how to disagree with one another respectfully? As it turns out, that column appeared in our newspaper five days before this incident occurred.

As I said, we have the freedom of speech in this country, and Dowdell’s actions were an infringement on that freedom. It was made worse because he is a city councilman, and he told the newspaper that he would see to it that “I’m going on the record that (the placement of Confederate flags) will never happen again. This will never happen again as long as I’m on the city council.”

So here you have a man who is violating private property, desecrating gravesites, infringing on the freedom of speech and arbitrarily making city policy all by himself.

Needless to say, the rest of the members of the City Council were ... less than thrilled.

Dowdell explained that he wasn’t surprised that they disapproved of what he did. After all, he said, “I’m the only black man on the city council, why would they agree with me? They’re all white. They don’t understand.”

Gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis came to town two days after this news broke. Davis is black, so Dowdell might have been expecting that Davis would defend his actions.

Nope.

“I respect all cemeteries and people have a right to honor the dead in the way that they want,“ Davis said.

And then Davis said this:

“We have to live with each other no matter what our differences and no matter what our history. We’re simultaneously the capital of the civil rights movement and the capital of the Confederacy,” he said. “Neither one of those parts of our past is going to disappear, and whoever is governor of this state has a moral obligation to respect all Alabamians ...

“There are undoubtedly people who are offended by the Confederate flag, and they every right to be. And there are undoubtedly people who venerate the Confederate flag and honor it, and they have every right to do that, too,” he said. “The question is are there things we have in common?

“The fact that my ancestors were on one side of the Civil War and some of my constituents’ ancestors were on the other side doesn’t mean we can’t work together and find a common ground.”

This is why Davis is a serious candidate for governor and Dowdell ... isn’t.

So what did Dowdell think of Davis’s remarks?

“I don’t care whether a congressman came to town. I don’t vote for him,“ he said.

I’m sure there are some folks in Auburn who support what Dowdell did. But the majority of citizens who have engaged with the newspaper on its web site and written letters to the editor believe he was wrong.

So the City Council asked him tonight to apologize. And, to his credit, that’s exactly what Dowdell did.

It couldn’t have been an easy thing to do. It would have been much easier to dig in and wage a protracted battle about a symbol, a battle that would have likely ended up in court and cost this city many thousands of taxpayer dollars to wage. But Dowdell recognized that he was wrong, and he said so.

That’s a step in the right direction.

Dowdell said in his statement before the packed council chambers last night that it was not his intention to hurt anyone’s feelings and that his actions were the result of “miscommunication” and “ignorance.”

“I’m sorry this happened,” Dowdell said. “I hope we can get past it.”

On those points, Councilman Dowdell and I agree.