Response to Dixie

After reading the Dying for Dixie chapter, I was shocked at how intense the racial problem is in Guthrie. The people that the author encounters are very extreme in their beliefs. Like the people with literature road-blocks that were dressed up and sharing their pamphlets trying to recruit members that were on their way out of church. They were bragging about the positions their kids were in in the group and showed how important this type of life was for them. I also found it crazy that a man was murdered becasue his truck had a confederate flag on it. I would have to believe that something more than just the flag provoked the shooters to follow and shoot at the man. This chapter also showed that some of the extremists just didn't like anybody that didn't have the same beliefs as them. Like the guy in the bar that ripped the authors sleeve just because he was asking questions about their views.
This chapter also brought to view the extreme importance of the confederate flag for many southerners, or atleast many southerners in the Guthrie area. Parents were threatening to withold their tax money and withdraw their children from school because the school board was going to change the mascot from two cartoons holding confederate flags to just an outline of the county. Also, the death of the young man brought many people to the area from many different groups such as SVC and NAACP to record what happens, help to family, and make him a martyr. They buried him with soldiers who died in the world wars and gave him the same type gravestone to symbol that the war hasn't ended, but just subsided a little and suggesting that they think it will rise again.
I found this chapter much more racists than the first, but it was interesting to read how people take the confederacy to the extreme.