To the Editor:

[Editor’s note: This letter is in response to John L. Micek’s column “You can’t be an American and fly the Confederate flag,” which was reprinted on Aug. 18.]

Because of space constraints, without going into the history of the horrible institution of slavery and judging 19th-century people with 21-century hindsight, I would like to say that by the using the logic of the recent editorial stating that “you can not be American and fly the Confederate Flag” because of what was written in the Confederate Constitution, you also can not be American and fly the American flag because of what was written in the U.S. Constitution. While slavery is not mentioned by name in the pre-1865 U.S. Constitution, it is extremely obvious and every Constitutional scholar will tell you, that Article 1 Sections 2 and 9, along with Article 4 Section 2, clearly sanctions and protects slavery.

This is the U.S. Constitution in effect until after Civil War. As bad as this sounds, the fact is slavery was a Constitutional right as written by the Founding Fathers.

In addition, every slave ever brought to this continent was brought under a ship flying the American flag. Importing slaves was made illegal long before there was a Confederacy.

I would like to ask the writer of that editorial, using the slavery test, what flag can we fly then?

I have seen many who oppose the Confederate monuments and flag are flying the red World Workers Party Communist flag.

Maybe that one?

Volpe Boykin
Walters