A very public battle has come to an end.
Annie Caddell, who the neighborhood now affectionately refers to as ‘Miss Annie’, moved into the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Summerville, South Carolina in 2010.
Within the year, she started to fly the American flag….side by side with the Confederate flag.
She saw it, as many do, as a sign of respect for relatives who fought for the Confederacy. And didn’t see it at all as a form of racism.
Of course, the neighborhood didn’t see it that way.
They at first, gently implored her to take it down.
No go. “Would you let your family history die like that? I don’t think so,” she told them. “That’s tantamount to treason in my family. You just don’t do that.”
They then took a stronger approach.
The NAACP got involved. They signed petitions. They marched numerous times with placards singing We Shall Overcome. They made overtures with flowers.
Her response was inviting counter-protesters, made up of apparent white nationalists to stand in her yard with confederate flags and signs of their own.
The neighbors raised enough money to build a fence on both sides of her property line, so they didn’t have to see the flag. Which further narrowed Annie's view from any sort of insight, as well as the neighborhood
Her response…..she installed a taller flagpole.
City Hall publicly sided with the community, but there was nothing legal they could do.
And for years, the neighborhood simmered in discord.
And then …..the heart attack.
And the change of heart.
"When you have a heart attack and you're being told you're not gonna live very long, you're facing your mortality. I needed to clean up the messes that I made by being so stubborn, and I have asked anyone within earshot to forgive me.
I care more about my living neighbors, then my dead relatives.
I think i’ve done more honor for them now, then i’ve done in my whole life.”
Said Community Resource Center founder Louis Smith, “ We did this like adults. This wasn’t a time for high-fives.
It was a time for solidarity.”
"Since that heart attack came by and taught me a little lesson about free will, and being in the will of God, I decided that I would rather be friends with my neighbor," said Miss Annie.
"By taking this fence down for the community it shows that we as a community can grow together. We can resolve our differences in a manner that is befitting and becoming a community."
During her recovery from surgery, it was her African-American neighbors that checked in on her, and brought her food.
The very brothers and sisters that were marching in front of her house, were now bringing soup.
None of the pro confederacy members of the state have ever bothered to do either.
She was invited to, and is now a regular attendee of the AME church in her neighborhood.
Said a neighbor when the locals started hammering down the wall, “Do you hear that?
That’s the sound of peace.”
To reiterate the words of Steve Hartman, where he also subtly slammed tRump…..
“In America, some people love to build walls. But if this one block in this great country shows us anything….is that we love tearing them down even more.”