With Confederate flags at MLK church, fight for national identity persists

(The Christian Science Monitor) One religious leader called the placing of four Confederate flags next to a U.S. civil rights landmark in Atlanta a “terroristic tactic.”

A surveillance camera indicates that two white men laid the flags on the lawn near the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church at about 1:30 Thursday morning.

For many, the symbolism was profound just over a month after a Confederate flag-waving white supremacist killed nine black parishioners during a Bible study at another historic church, in Charleston, South Carolina. The incident comes amid a building backlash among some Southerners against efforts to remove Confederate symbols from public places, and it underscores a difficult moment for a nation that has yet to entirely escape the bounds of the Civil War and fully reshape its identity to reflect deeper diversity.