I’m all in favor of both civility and caution, but the use of the Confederate flag by blatantly racist organizations predates the most modern forms of communication. Groups like the one that primarily inspired the Charleston shooter aren’t interested in civil, fact-based discourse. Given the decades of debate about removing the flag and the fact that conservative southern politicians are leading the way, I wouldn’t call that a knee-jerk reaction.

Other efforts could become knee-jerk reactions, however, and I would caution against those, just as I repeatedly wrote about Savannah’s recent demolition of two important sites along MLK: the historic cottages of Meldrim Row and the old pharmacy.

I’m not sure of your intent in posting this, but you should click on through to Stan Deaton’s post above. We are always reevaluating history; every generation changes the symbols that represent them and change the names of various sites, roads, streets, buildings, etc. We don’t live in a static society. No one I know is trying to destroy any of that history — it’s all part of the knowledge that we accumulate. As Deaton notes in that post, if we followed a policy of immutability, all the streets in Savannah would still have their colonial names — but at least we’d still have Tomo-Chi-Chi’s monument in the middle of Wright Square.