On the EDge: The Dixie myth

August 21, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION – There’s a reason why Southern Utah’s Dixie has such pitiful diversity numbers.

The notion that the area was given the nickname simply because of its warm climate and cotton-growing history is myth.

The man dispatched to help settle the region that would become known as Utah’s Dixie in 1857, Robert Dockery Covington, was not sent as a result of spiritual revelation or divine inspiration, he was sent to replicate the cotton industry of the Old South. It would give the Mormon settlers a cut of the lucrative trade that was in jeopardy as the nation crept ever-closer to the Civil War.

He was, according to historians cited in an archived 2012 Salt Lake Tribune story, sent because he and his father had run what historians have described as a “large successful plantation” growing cotton and tobacco in Noxubee County, Mississippi, where he served as a slave overseer. Antagonists and apologists have a divided view on Covington, who has, needless to say, become a controversial figure in Southern Utah history.

The cotton enterprise eventually collapsed, however the region would retain the moniker Utah’s Dixie.

Despite the romanticism and lore, the Dixie of the Old South was not a kinder, gentler or honorable place.

It was the name given to the 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860-’61 to go to war with the United States.

It was a defiant place where resentment towards the federal government was fever-pitched.

It was an arrogant place where landowners thought they could establish a nation unto itself based on an economy of cotton and tobacco.

It was a sorrowful place where slavery was allowed to flourish and human beings, torn from their mother soil, were raped, beaten and shackled to a grueling existence only death could relieve.

Some plantation owners and farmers offered a degree of humanity, feeding their slaves well, giving them adequate clothing, educating a few – mostly to teach them to read the Bible as a step in their forced conversion to Christianity.

The harsh reality, of course, was that no matter how well they were fed, how nice their clothing, how much literacy they attained, they were still slaves, entrapped by a life of enforced servitude.

Although there were few slaves in Utah, racism was a part of the culture, particularly when President Brigham Young of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declared in 1847 that African-Americans could not participate in temple ordinances, including the endowment ritual, celestial marriage and family sealing. The men were also banned from holding the priesthood. It was an edict that remained in effect until 1978.

Through all of this, the connection to the Old South was strong in Southern Utah where the schools in Iron and Washington counties would put on annual minstrel shows, with the supposedly educated faculty and administration decked out in black-face makeup entertaining the community. There were statues erected at the college to honor the Confederacy. It was common to see large Confederate flags flying over businesses across the region. The St. George mayor, between giving cheerleader speeches about the “Dixie Spirit,” would lead crowds in singing “Are You From Dixie?” We’ve got Dixie High School, Dixie State University and a plethora of businesses with Dixie in their titles. Until 2005, the college athletic teams were known as the Dixie Rebels.

So, is it a surprise to learn that the African-American population in Iron and Washington counties is a pitiful 0.6 percent? Is it any wonder why the Hispanic population sits at just under 10 percent? Is it a shock to learn that 2.2 percent of the DSU students are of African-American descent and 9.3 percent with Hispanic heritage?

Would you want to live, work or attend school where the numbers are so stacked against you?

If you come from Southern Utah, you are, undoubtedly white and firmly entrenched in the culture and customs.

You have not been exposed to diverse groups of people because, well, people of color just don’t come here in large numbers.

You will argue that if somebody doesn’t like it, if a person doesn’t go along with all the Dixie references, they should go back to where they came from because they are not welcomed here.

You would also be horribly ignorant of the fact that other people’s feelings matter as well, that just because something doesn’t offend you doesn’t mean it is not offensive. As we have learned, some people seem to be getting away with incredibly offensive behavior and words right now.

The nation is a racial powder keg with Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis marching on one side and social activists on the other.

Sign me up with the social activists.

There is no room for the KKK or neo-Nazis in my world.

There is no room for oppression or its ugly symbolism in my world.

There is no room for violence and hate.

And, there is no room for specious blanket condemnation that equates those who seek equality FOR OR WITH all with those who preach the hatred of bigotry.

It is incomprehensible to me that, after fighting the Nazi curse and the enduring battle for Civil Rights, we are revisiting this inequity.

The symbols of racism are constant reminders of the shameful behavior that took place in the United States.

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson certainly have earned a place in our history books, but so have Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden who also were military combatants waging war against the United States.

They were important historical figures and we are compelled to study them to try to understand them, to learn from those horrible experiences.

But, neither these historical figures, nor the symbolism that represents them, should be memorialized or honored.

But, that is what happens with the perpetuation of the Dixie myth.

No bad days!

Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: edkociela.mx@gmail.com

Twitter: @STGnews, @EdKociela