Video of a Black high school student in Colorado punching a White student, who’s known for wearing Nazi attire, has gone viral on Twitter.
The incident, which occurred in August at Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch, a suburb of Denver, began after the White student allegedly struck a T-pose in which a person demonstrates dominance, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office’s Lt. Lori Bronner told Denver’s ABC 7.
“Some people say it has been used by the KKK to represent a burning cross,” she told The Denver Post.
According to Bronner, the Black student confronted the other student for the pose and spit on him, and the White student spat back. The Black high schooler walked away but came back and punched the White student in the face.
Bronner said that the White student, who is seen wearing a green jacket in the video, picked up a rock and threw it at the Black student but missed.
“We’ve had no other situations like this,” said Bronner.
Both students were arrested; the Black student was charged with assault while and the White student was charged with harassment and disorderly conduct.
“Principal Michael Weaver told the parents that there was an altercation between two students,” Paula Hans, spokeswoman for the Douglas County School District, told the Post. “The administration worked with the students and families directly involved as well as the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.”
Earlier reports claimed that the White student had Nazi symbols on his green jacket but that the badge was not on his coat during the incident in August. Students told the Post that the teen had worn the symbols on his jacket before and reporters confirmed that he had posted images on Instagram of him wearing a Nazi uniform.
A previously unreported video of a black Mountain Vista High School student punching a white student known for wearing Nazi garb has gone viral this week even though the incident happened in August, leaving the school system once again addressing a hate incident on campus.
The fight video is just the latest in a string of hate-based incidents happening inside the halls of Colorado schools.
“Incidents are up,” said Jeremy Shaver, associate regional director for the Colorado Anti-Defamation League. “As we’ve seen an increase of incidents in Colorado since 2015, the percentage in schools has also increased.”
Video of the fight at the Highlands Ranch school rocketed around social media this week after a Twitter user from Baltimore posted it to his feed. The Denver Post is not publishing the video because it depicts two juveniles, who since have been charged with crimes.
In the video, the white student, wearing a military green jacket, was doing a T-pose, a popular meme in gaming, but one that “some people say has been used by the KKK to represent a burning cross,” Lt. Lori Bronner, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said. The black student confronted him, daring him to continue this pose, Bronner said.
Next, the two students were walking side by side in a courtyard area as dozens of others milled about. Then, the black student abruptly punched the white student in the face. After a few seconds, the white student got up, picked up a landscaping rock and threw it at the other student. He missed.
Police said the student who threw the punch chased down the freshman in the military jacket, kicking him as the student curled up on the ground. At some point in the incident, Bronner said, the white student called the black teen a racial slur. Security arrived soon after and broke up the fight.
Both students were arrested, Bronner said. The white student was charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and criminal attempt assault, while the other student was charged with assault, harassment and disorderly conduct. There were no charges of a hate crime, Bronner said.
The school said the white student was wearing a green jacket but that it did not sport Nazi insignias. Students from Mountain Vista said this student was known for wearing this green jacket complete with Nazi regalia. A review of the juvenile’s Instagram account shows multiples pictures of him wearing Nazi uniforms.
Paula Hans, spokeswoman for the Douglas County School District, said the school “communicated out to parents, and the incident was handled at the time.”
“Principal Michael Weaver told the parents that there was an altercation between two students,” Hans said. “The administration worked with the students and families directly involved as well as the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.”
The school would not say whether either student was suspended or expelled.
This is not the first hate-based incident at Mountain Vista High School — or in Colorado — in recent months.
The Colorado Anti-Defamation League does not break down incidents by school, but overall antisemitic incidents in the state tripled between 2015 and 2017, Shaver said. There were 57 incident in 2017, up from 18 in 2015.
“Incidents in schools tend to be on the lower level, vandalism, swastikas drawn on school property and verbal or written harassment,” Shaver said.
In 2017, anti-Semitic incidents at K-12 schools nationwide increased to 457 from 235 in 2016, a 94 percent bump, according to a national audit by the Anti-Defamation League.
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. – It’s been three months since a black student in Colorado reportedly punched a white student wearing a Nazi jacket in the face, but the incident has only come to light after a video of the fight went viral this week.
The fight, which happened in August, began at lunch break in front of Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, when the white student in the Nazi jacket was doing a T-pose, which is a popular meme among gamers to demonstrate dominance or power, said Lt. Lori Bronner with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office.
Historically, some members of the Ku Klux Klan have used the pose to “represent a burning cross,” Bronner told KMGH.
Bronner said the black student saw the white student doing the T-pose and went up to confront him. They exchanged words and the black student spit on the white student, at which point the white student did the same to the black student.
The black student then briefly walked away but returned to confront the white student once again before punching him in the face, causing the student to fall to the ground, according to Bronner.
She said the student wearing the green Nazi jacket then got up, grabbed a rock and threw it at the black student, missing him.
According to Bronner, the student who threw the punch then ran after his peer and kicked him after he fell to the ground. She said the student in the Nazi jacket curled into a protective, fetal position while calling the black teen a racial slur.
Shortly afterward, a third student and staff members separated the two boys.
“We’ve had no other situations like this,” said Bronner, adding this type of disputes are very rare.
Bronner said the black student was charged with assault for punching and kicking the white student, and was also charged with harassment and disorderly conduct.
The white student, Bronner said, was charged with harassment, disorderly conduct and criminal attempted assault for throwing a landscaping rock at the black student.
No one was charged with a hate crime.
KMGH reached out to Douglas County Schools for comment. Paula Hans, a public information officer for DCSD, said she could not discuss specifics on any given student’s disciplinary actions, only saying “a student is not allowed per DCSD dress code policy to wear anything that is offensive or disruptive to the learning environment.”
When asked if the white student’s jacket had any Nazi markings, Hans only said the principal at Mountain Vista High School informed her that there were “no markings on the jacket.”
According to the Denver Post,students said the white teenager was known for wearing the green jacket complete with Nazi regalia. A review by a newspaper reporter of the juvenile’s Instagram account shows multiples pictures of him wearing Nazi uniforms.
A white teen wearing a Nazi uniform jacket is punched by a black classmate in Colorado (left via screenshot)) and the student posing in the jacket (right, via Instagram).
The Denver Post reported that the video shared by Baltimore-based graphic designer Benjamin Jancewicz was shot in August at Mountain Vista High School in the Denver suburbs.
In the video, which was recorded on Snapchat and set to LL Cool J’s 1990 hit “Mama Said Knock You Out” to preserve the anonymity of the students, the black teen is seen punching his white classmate in the head.
The Denver Post reported that the white student was recorded doing a “T-pose,” a gaming meme that Lt. Lori Bronner, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said has been associated with “the KKK to represent a burning cross.”
The report and Jancewicz both noted that the white student called his black classmate a racial slur, though it’s unclear if he said it before or after the student punched him. The student in the Nazi jacket then reportedly tried to throw a rock at the other teen, who later kicked him while he was on the ground.
Bronner said both students were arrested and charged in relation to the fight — the white student with “harassment, disorderly conduct and criminal attempt assault” and the black student with “assault, harassment and disorderly conduct.”
Jancewicz said he was sent social media profiles said to belong to the white student in the Nazi jacket that show his apparent fixation with Nazi symbolism and memorabilia.
In the photos and videos the Baltimore designer posted, the teen described by the Denver Post as a high school freshman is seen posing with a flag bearing an Iron Cross and a Soviet flag and wearing the same jacket he appeared to be wearing in the video.
There’s a website called Curious Cat which allows people to ask you anonymous questions. I signed up for a profile a while back, and occasionally go on to answer what people have asked me.
Most of the questions are pretty simple, but sometimes they go really deep. My answer turned into a mini-essay, so I’ve distilled it here.
Are you in a rush to get back to a relationship?
Yes. No.
I realized the other day that I’ve never in my life been purposefully single. I don’t know how to feel about that. It shook me up a lot a bit and like so much that’s been happening lately, really rattled me off track.
When I was in high school, I always wanted a girlfriend. I was daydreaming and fantasizing about just holding someone close.
It never happened.
When I look back and try to remember those times, it feels like a long, intense, ache.
When I moved to the states after graduation, something shook me loose. I took an extra year of high school to mitigate some of the culture shocks of moving from the village to the States.
I was popular for the first time ever, but not as a typically handsome jock teenager. I was rough, wild, aloof; I reinvented myself as a class clown and rapidly built a long list of meaningful but shallow friendships. But the girl I had a crush on was the one thing I wasn’t able to relax about.
I tensed up, was awkward, and instead of being wild and aloof, I was a brooding piano-playing poet. I couldn’t pull off the suaveness that later attracted her to someone else.
After my extra year of high school in the states, I left for college, losing ties with every last one of the list of friends. Freshman year was tough, but I eventually found a tribe of people who I felt at home with. I gave up on love, and on being able to satisfy the ache.
I fell into a relationship. One of the many girls I had a crush on kissed me out of the blue, and it turned into a 2-year relationship.
I was happy.
But I tried everything in my power to make sure that ache never came back. She didn’t see a future with me and one day cut off all connection with me.
I was broken.
I tried staying away from relationships for two years. My friends pulled and pushed me to leave my room. I had girls I had serious crushes on. But either they didn’t want to move forward, or I didn’t. The ache was cacophonous. It drove me mad. I was miserable and played it off while being wild.
I became best friends with a girl I had a crush on, but then let the crush go.
We did everything together.
She kissed me.
We were married for 12 years.
I was happy.
I did everything in my power to make sure that ache never came back. She wasn’t. I was too immature to separate what she was dealing with from my own issues. My own scars and my own aches made things worse.
I ended it.
For the first time in almost a decade and a half, I feel truly alone. So much of my purpose was wrapped up in the relationship, in making sure she was ok, in making sure we were good, in running toward the horizon and fighting for us.
And that’s gone.
Now I’m supposed to wield all that energy and intensity and pour it onto myself and help myself heal and grow. But most of the time it feels hollow. That ache feels like it is all I ever feel anymore, and sometimes it feels like it will swallow me whole.
Glimpses and possibilities of relationships peek through the haze, and though the crushes are rising up again, I’m petrified of them. I’m scared of messing it all up. I’m scared of the ache coming back even more. I’m scared that I’m too broken. I’m scared I haven’t healed properly.
So. Am I in a rush to get back into a relationship?
Yes. I want to feel that glow again. I want someone to give to. I want to be held.
No. I am tender and sore. I have an ache that would swallow you. I haven’t grown enough. I’m unstable. And I’m really afraid of being hurt.
There are even people close to me who want to help, who want to ease me along with the healing, and I’m afraid of overloading them and crushing them.
I’m even afraid of answering questions like this, afraid of what my own reflection will look like as I unearth it.
Some days I feel good. I feel loved, and feel secure, and feel like I’m actually growing and healing.
Then there are days like today, where I feel like I’m disintegrating in a heap of flames. I’ll probably feel better tomorrow. After I get some real rest. But right now I feel fragile.
Do you still believe in marriage?
Not in the way I did.
It’s a patriarchal mess of a tradition that was designed to put women into bondage. It only works if we check in on each other every year. Open a time capsule of memories. Reminisce. Make new promises. Make sure we keep them.
To be honest, even thinking about marriage wears me out. I don’t even know how to date. Like, all my relationships were friendships that turned into something else. I’ve never dated, I have to figure out how the hell it works. I don’t even know if I’m ready.
I have to trust that it will get better. That I won’t collapse in on myself. That the friends who are close to me are right, that I will eventually be ok. That I’ll get through this. That I’ll feel whole. That love will come.
For now, all I have is the ache.
What’s the benefit/virtue of purposefully being single?
I really honestly do not know. Better knowledge of the self? But I never felt like I didn’t know myself when I was in a relationship. But maybe that was blindness.
What’s next? By that I mean, what do you want the next part of your story (outside of a relationship) to look like and what steps to get to that?
I really have no idea. And it scares me. I don’t know what being a bachelor looks like. What going solo looks like I’ve got my own goals. Dreams. Things I want to do, ways I want to move. …I just always wanted someone to share it with me.
Do you still believe in love?
No matter what happens to me, I will never not believe in love. Either I’m especially foolish or just loveblind. That’s never going away.
Dragonfly out in the sun,
You know what I mean.
Butterflies all havin’ fun,
You know what I mean.
Sleep in peace when the day is done,
That’s what I mean.
And this old world,
Is a new world,
And a bold world,
For me.
—Nina Simone
Today is the first day I live as someone who is divorced.
Though it was years in the making, the process ended with a quick thunderclap. I worried about it, and like most things I worry about, I tried doing research into how divorce worked. But I couldn’t find anyone who could tell me what the process was like.
My ex and I got up early, took the kids to school, and headed to the courts. We stopped to get our Separation Agreement notarized at a small mailbox shop on the way, and picked up some Dunkin Donuts. It felt like rocks in my gut, but I forced myself to eat. I knew going in on an empty stomach would have been worse.
Baltimore courthouses are in a cluster just Northeast of the harbour, and because they’re all together, we didn’t know exactly which one to go to. A friendly sheriff helped us in the right direction, across the street from where we thought we were to be.
It was odd being there; it was the same courthouse that I had done many protests at, where my friend Randy Gloss had been arrested, where Keith Davis Jr.’s court hearing was… it was strange.
We went in and the sheriff in charge of scanning people with the metal detector was barking at everyone, clearly having a miserable morning. I stuffed all of my electronics and my belt into my jacket so that it would be easier to get through. But then he told me I HAD to wear my jacket. I fumbled everything back out and got through.
3 massive LCD screens bolted to the wall had the names of everyone who was assigned to hearings for the day, and what room they were meant to report to. However, though the list was sorted by name, not all the cases were by last time. Ours was by first. My ex finally saw where we were supposed to go, and we got in line to board the ancient elevators to the third floor.
The courtroom was different than I expected; beautiful art-deco-brutalist woodwork, punctuated by technological additions like CCTVs and mics and something that looked like an XBOX motion scanner. It was cozy, with paned windows lining one wall looking out over a roof; it felt like a small chapel. Several other people were already in the room, but nobody sat together. We took a pew together in the front.
Immediately, the court clerk asked if I had provided the proof of how I had done the calculations for the child support figures I had put down. My heart sank. Though I’d gone over everything in painstaking detail, the tool used to calculate the figures wouldn’t print. I’d saved a copy on my computer but didn’t have it with me. Fortunately, I remembered all the numbers and managed to fill it out on my phone.
There were several cases before ours, which felt awkward. We watched several divorces play out in different ways in front of us; couple’s heartwrenching moments playing out feet in front of us. A couple in which one parent almost lost child custody because they were 30 minutes late, who then argued with the magistrate. A couple who had been married for over 25 years, who were battling over the deed to a house in foreclosure. And then… it was our turn.
After verifying the pronunciation of our name a bunch of times, I asked about a law that had just gone into effect in Maryland. Starting October 1st, a full year of separation is no longer required for a Mutual Consent Divorce. Though I understand the goal of the original law; to make sure that a couple had a waiting period before they rushed into a divorce, the law essentially made it a tax on the poor. Couples who couldn’t afford a second residence (like us) really could not get a Mutal Consent Divorce, because housing is so expensive.
The magistrate said we did qualify, but that we’d have to file an addendum, which we could do right then and there at the clerk’s office downstairs. We went down, filled out the paperwork, and came back up. The magistrate wanted time to look over our separation agreement while we did that.
I had put in a lot of research and time into the separation agreement, and my ex and I worked through the details in minute ways. It’s an odd thing; it is essentially a set of compromises between a couple that gets solidified into law when a couple gets divorced. It details out things like child custody, alimony, child support, dividing up debt and assets, and a bunch of other stuff.
The magistrate spent a good amount of time on it, carefully questioning us about every detail, making sure we both consented to every line item. I started to feel odd; why was she doing all this? I thought that this was just supposed to be a scheduling meeting so we could come in later…
She kept going, and then finished up with “very good, you’ll get a certificate in the mail.” I was confused. I raised my hand. “You mean we don’t have to come back to court?” Had this just happened? She smiled. “Not unless you really want to.”
Though the change in the law had happened a week earlier, we were the first case she’d seen it actually play out. Normally it takes months between filing and your first court appearance, so nobody had even applied for this new method. We were on of the fastest divorces the magistrate had ever seen. “I see the worst of people in here,” she said, “you two actually have your stuff together.”
We walked out, shell-shocked. We talked about a few things as we made our way back to the car, but I don’t remember any of it. Had this just actually happened? It felt sudden. Unrushed, but quick. We’d done all the work. It was over.
It felt like a tooth that had been waiting to come out for a long time. That needed to come out. And now that it was finally out, it was good. But also a deeply strange feeling.
I was exhausted. The weight of everything hit me all at once; slamming into me like a cold front rushing down the mountains. The pain was gone, but the labor it took to make everything work, to make everything just right, the mental preparedness I had to do just to get through it… the release of that was overwhelming.
Divorce is not something I had ever wanted. But it was something that was necessary. I knew it had to be done. It had been a last resort; a way that finally allows healing I needed, to grow in the ways I needed to grow, to protect the kids, to be able to be who I needed for them.
As I woke up today, everything felt different. I stepped outside; the entire sky was lit up in gold. The sun peeking through the limbs of the trees on the horizon. The air was cool, crisp. It is the first day that felt like fall.
I talked about it before, but within a couple weeks I’ll be gone from Facebook.
It’s going to be complicated to disconnect, because I’ll have to turn off Messenger, and Instagram, and a bunch of other services. The sheer volume of applications and sites that use Facebook for me to log into is astounding.
Why are you quitting?
There are a bunch of reasons people quit, from proven studies about how Facebook worsens your mood, to how addictive it is. Some people quit because of how toxic people can be on here, or how invasive the advertising is.
However, the main reason I’m quitting is because of their egregious record on privacy. I recently downloaded my Facebook data (which you can do too), and I was shocked at how much information they tracked.
Here’s how to do it if you’re interested:
Click at the top right of any Facebook page and select Settings.
Click Download a copy of your Facebook data below your General Account Settings.
Click Start My Archive.
It may not work immediately. It took me a couple tries to get my data.
Another thing you should check is if credit card info is stored on there, which you can do by clicking on Settings > Payments.
I’m also disturbed by how little they tell you about new policies or changes, and how easy it is for them to give your data away to the highest bidder.
Zuckerberg has been consistent in his message that he does not care about people’s privacy, so long as he can make money.
Mostly. I also really dislike the way they deal with cyberbullying, fascism, and racism. Facebook is lax in all those areas. Even though I’ve done things like report the account of the Maryland KKK member who fired a gun at anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, his account is still active.
Facebook is NOT a great place for activism outside of groups, which I’ll remain active in. I’ve been monitoring the views on my regular wall, and with each algorithm change, those go down.
I have a lot of stuff on here, which I’ll slowly be cleaning out. It’s been over a decade that I’ve had facebook, there are family photos, all kinds of stuff. And there really isn’t another place like facebook yet, where nearly everyone is on it. It’s sad to lose that.
But I’d rather not be complicit in a system that harms people. And my being here keeps other people here. So I’m cutting ties.
I also have several businesses that I manage on here, from Zerflin to a bunch of my own clients who pay me to help them with social media. I’ll keep doing that.
I’m going to be slowly archiving and deleting my content on here, especially photos. I have a giant photo collection on here, which Facebook uses to identify all of you. That makes me sick, especially since they can sell that data to other people.
I’ve made my last Facebook post ever. Unless they do some serious work to change, this is it.
Can I talk you out of it?
Nope. Though you’re welcome to talk to me about it, just not on Facebook. This decision has been 3 years in the making.
Where can we find you?
That’s easy. My website has links at the bottom left to every social media I’m on. I’m sure you’ll find something we have in common.
Marylanders love their unique flag. But do they know its association with the Confederate cause?
Benjamin Jancewicz does not pay for HBO, and he is not a native Marylander. He grew up on a First Nation reservation in Canada. But this past July, when he learned the creators of Game of Thrones were in talks to bring a controversial new series Confederate, which revisits the Civil War and imagines a present in which the South had won—to the cable giant, he began noodling around the internet for the backstory of Maryland’s flag. His interest in the state’s ubiquitous flag, as a graphic designer, and Maryland’s conflicted role in the Civil War, as an activist, naturally intersected and piqued his curiosity. Like many non-natives, he also admits to some bewilderment at Marylanders’ unbridled love for their flag.
Almost immediately, Jancewicz found information linking the red-and-white quadrants of the flag—and the cross bottony contained therein—to the Confederate cause. Maryland soldiers fighting for the South often pinned the cross bottony to the lapels of their gray uniforms. And local citizens caught wearing the colors red and white during the war, or dressing their babies in such, could be charged with treason. “It’s not tough to dig this stuff up,” he says. “It’s right there on the state’s website.”
Jancewicz’s first tweet that night was intentionally provocative:
— Bucky with the Good Arm (@benjancewicz) July 31, 2017
He posted in the same Twitter thread that, after the war, Maryland tried to reconcile its split personality by creating its first official state flag—the one we admire today—in 1904. It combines the black and gold paternal Calvert crest—associated with the Union during the war and the flag of Baltimore City today—with the red and white crest of the maternal side of the Calvert family, which had been co-opted by the Confederates. (The Calverts, notably George, son Cecil, and grandson Charles—the first three Barons of Baltimore—were the founding family of the Maryland colony.)
The backlash was swift. Right-wing news outlet Breitbart caught wind of Jancewicz’s viral tweet and published a rebuke. Red Maryland, a conservative group, began a “Save Maryland’s Flag” petition. Gov. Larry Hogan declared the flag would not be changed on his watch. TV and radio stations interviewed Jancewicz, who received threats.
“More than anything, I think the response demonstrated two things: Most Marylanders don’t know the history of their flag,” Jancewicz says. “And that for all the people who say flags and monuments don’t matter, they are obviously important to a lot of people.”
Then, the controversy died as quickly as it had arisen. There was no broad call for the flag be redrawn. (Not that Jancewicz advocated one; he only encouraged people to learn its history.) We simply hold it too dear. At least for now.
The short answer to the question, “Does part of the Maryland state flag have ties to the Confederate cause?” is easy. Yes. Easy answers to other questions are more elusive. Because Maryland Confederate sympathizers and soldiers embraced the colors of the maternal side of the Calvert coat of arms (created in England in the early 17th century), does that mean the flag is forever tainted? When claims are made that the Maryland flag was created to “reconcile” Union and Confederate sides after the war, is that true?
Or, is it better understood as an attempt by white, Southern-sympathetic state legislators to assert their prominence? Certainly, the creation of the state flag was not an effort to repair the harm of two and a half centuries of slavery in Maryland to African Americans. Even at the time the legislators were claiming to bring together opposing sides of the war (nearly four decades after its conclusion) by formally adopting the flag, attempts were made by state legislators to disenfranchise black voters.
The bigger question may be whether Maryland should fly any flag paying homage to the Calvert family—either black and gold or red and white. The founding family’s record on race is shameful. In 1639, under Cecil Calvert—the second Lord Baltimore—Maryland became the first colony to specify baptism as a Christian did not make a slave a free person, as it did in England. In 1664, led by the third Lord Baltimore, plantation owner and Proprietary Governor Charles Calvert, Maryland became the first colony to mandate lifelong servitude for all black slaves, the first to make the children of slaves their master’s property for life, and the first to ban interracial marriages.
Still, it is hard to overstate the popularity of the Maryland banner. There’s a store in Hampden, Baltimore in a Box, whose entire brick rowhouse exterior has been painted to replicate the flag. There is an enormous unfurling during University of Maryland football and basketball games.
The flag can be seen on beer koozies, bikinis, beach blankets, T-shirts, key chains, cycling jerseys, and winter hats. On Twitter, Jancewicz posted a compilation of state flag tattoos.
Indeed, before Baltimore in a Box had finished the repainting of their Hampden home, an image of the massive Maryland flag storefront popped up on reddit with appropriate kudos: “T-minus 24 hours until Baltimore’s [Instagram] models come out in droves to pose in front of this.”
“People walking down ‘The Avenue’ in Hampden take pictures of it all the time without ever even in coming in,” says store owner Ross Nochumowitz. “Marylanders love the state flag. They think it’s perfect.”
To locate the origin of our admired state banner, you need to drive an hour north of London to St. Mary’s Church in Hertingfordbury, England. The design that would form the basis of our flag is inside the medieval stone chapel there, atop the beautiful funereal tomb of Anne Mynne, the first wife of George Calvert, who died, it is believed, while delivering the couple’s 11th child.
On one side of the mantle behind the marble sculpture of her body—lying in repose in a flowing gown, her head resting on a tasseled pillow—is the unmistakable black and gold crosshatching of the paternal Calvert crest. On the other side of the mantle, toward her feet, is the Mynne family crest—red and white with what is known as the cross bottony (a Christian symbol with each arm terminating in three rounded lobes).
“It is a moving tribute from George Calvert to his wife,” says Henry Miller, a historical archaeologist and director of research for St. Mary’s City. “And you can’t help but be impressed when you see the Maryland colors there together.” When Miller leads tours of Marylanders interested in the state’s English roots to Hertingfordbury, the sight of Anne Mynne’s tomb and what would eventually become Maryland flag, he says, “is always the highlight of that trip.”
Digging past the Confederate question for a moment, there is also a smaller controversy around the maternal family origins. Most Maryland texts refer to the red and white and cross bottony quadrant as the “Crossland banner” or “Crossland arms,” in reference to George Calvert’s mother’s family—the Crosslands—and not to his wife Anne Mynne’s family. But that appears to be up for debate given the visual evidence at Anne Mynne’s tomb. Ed Papenfuse, the former Maryland state archivist, believes it’s a mistake passed down through the years before the documentation of the Mynne family crest at George Calvert’s wife’s tomb.
There is still no evidence to date, however, that explains why the Southern sympathizers in Maryland—some 25,000 men joined the Confederate Army—embraced the red and white quadrant and cross bottony. It is known that Maryland’s U.S. Union troops often stitched the black and gold Calvert emblem, more closely associated with the North, into their uniforms. So it may have just been a logical response by Confederates to co-opt the other half of the founding family of Maryland’s coat of arms. Conveniently, red and white were also colors strongly associated with the Southern cause. There is also the possibility that the cross itself imbued a certain religious crusade quality to the Confederate effort in the minds of its faithful.
Whatever the case, the cross continued to turn up as a Confederate symbol. It became the focal point of an ornate iron gateway in front of the Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers’ Home in Pikesville. And crosses bottony are fixed to the tombstones of Confederate soldiers in Maryland and monuments to Maryland’s Confederate soldiers at the Gettysburg battlefield. Also known: In 1945 the General Assembly mandated that a gold cross bottony—that Maryland Confederate symbol—is the only ornament that can be mounted above the state flag. In 1983, a version of the flag was put onto state license plates. From time to time, the red and white colors and cross bottony are still flown by neo-Confederates.
“For Marylanders, it was a very potent symbol of the Confederacy,” Papenfuse says. “But it was not created to serve the Confederacy. It was created to honor the important role of women in the Calvert family.”
Indeed, the heartbreaking inscription on Anne Mynne’s tomb from her husband, George, who went into seclusion from grief after her death, describes his wife of 18 years as “a woman born for all outstanding things.” “The bottom line, to me,” Papenfuse says, “is that its meaning has other aspects beyond its sad connection to the Confederacy.”
The flag, similar to Confederate monuments in the state, “are toxic and stressful to deal with, but we have to talk about them and deal with them,” says Morgan State University associate professor Lawrence Brown. “They are directly linked to racist policies put in place in the past—in fact, they were part of the animating effort that built support for those policies—many of which still exist today.”
Brown doesn’t believe there will be widespread demand to change the flag unless people on one side start using the red and white banner at their rallies, in the same way the Confederate flag is used. “Then, I think you’ll see pushback. Same thing with the Francis Scott Key monuments [Key, a slave owner and anti-abolitionist, included a lesser-known, pro-slavery stanza in his ‘Star-Spangled Banner’]. If they become a rallying point for white supremacists or the KKK, then there will be conflict and pushback.
“You can’t predict which way the river of history will turn, or where the rapids will appear,” Brown continues. “It is important to dismantle the symbols of racism, but that is not the end goal. It is more important to dismantle the polices they represent.”
“False Christs and false prophets will come and perform great wonders and miracles. They will try to fool even the people God has chosen, if that is possible.” –Matthew 24:24
When I began reading the Bible on my own, it was from tattered gold-covered copies of the Good News Bible that sat on shelves in the back of our tiny church. Someone had donated them long before my family had arrived in the village we lived in, and they’d seen years of uninterrupted use.
