Taking Down the Confederate Flag Is Not Woke

We shouldn’t apply such a modern, simplified lens to such an old wound. Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening. Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall. There are some things history makes difficult to sentimentalize. Frederick Douglass was a child when he learned what slavery meant. The lesson came through a closet door. Douglass remembered that his Aunt Hester was beautiful, strikingly so. She was, he wrote, “a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance.” She also had an admirer, a young man named Ned Roberts. John M. Sandy is a former trial attorney and writes on the Constitution, history, and Catholic social thought. He hosts the Catholic Passage Podcast and has work forthcoming in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law. He lives in Okoboji, Iowa. More Monday Essays