From a Young Friend by Alex Thompson

Good afternoon, my name is Alex. I'm in 3rd grade at Laurelview Elementary. Today in Social Studies we learned about the Civil War. We learned about how black people and white people fought against white people who didn't think that black people should have rights. This is a ridiculous concept to me because one of my very best friends Ryan is black, and I said so. Ryan stood up in front of the class and told us about how his great-grandfather died fighting for his freedom. I looked at Ryan in a whole new light after that. We also looked at the Confederate flag. Our teacher explained to us that because the South was its own country it had its own flag for a while. When I walked home from school that day I took a good hard look at my neighbor's flag pole. At the very top was the American flag. Right underneath was our state flag. What really caught my eye, though, was the flag right underneath the other two. That red flag with the blue stripes and stars. The Confederate flag. I was bombarded by a million different feelings at once. At first I was confused. Nowhere in my tiny little head could I come up with a reason why someone would fly a flag that stood for such hatred and anger. Maybe, I thought, they don't know what it stands for? But that didn't make any sense. Why would they have a flag in their front yard where everyone can see it if they don't know what it stands for? I decided that they were racist and probably belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and the Sons of Georgian Confederate Veterans, so I spit on their lawn and continued on into my house. Later I decided that spitting on their lawn was not the right thing to do and that if they were racist maybe a lot of love and compassion would make them see that we are all just brothers and sisters. So I wrote them a letter of apology and made lots of smiley faces and hearts on it. At the end I wrote:

P.S. Please take down your Confederate flag. It saddens me that you cannot accept the fact that we are all different, yet all the same.