![]() But the new Zimbabwean government had serious problems. In 1979, the Rhodesian government was toppled by an armed uprising - no surprise, considering black people outnumbered their white counterparts by about 25:1 (the equivalent number in South Africa was 7:1, per Horne). By 1976, "there was a sprawling proliferation of pro-Rhodesian organizations in the United States," University of Houston historian Gerald Horne writes "The transatlantic question of race was the essential glue that held the lobby together." In the United States, where the civil rights movement was winning historic victories, white supremacists saw the viciously racist Rhodesian government as a victory worth celebrating. In 1965, white natives led by a man named Ian Smith declared independence from Britain, and founded a country named Rhodesia, named after Cecil Rhodes (the British imperialist who led the colonization of the area). It was a terribly racist country, akin to apartheid South Africa, and became a sort of cause celebre for white supremacists in the 1960s and 1970s - one they still mythologize today.Īfter the area was colonized by the British in the late 1890s, a racial caste system quickly emerged in what would become Rhodesia, where white people controlled the commanding political heights, as well as most of the land, while black people served as peasants. Rhodesia used to be where today's Zimbabwe is. Here's a guide to what those flags mean - and why a man who appears to have committed a vicious hate crime would sport them on his jacket. ![]() That would be apartheid South Africa, which you might be aware of, and Rhodesia, which is a little less known. We know that not just from his actions: the above photo of Roof, identified by the Charleston Post and Courier, shows him wearing a jacket with the flags of two avowedly racist nations. Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year-old man suspected of walking into a historically black church and massacring nine parishioners, is in all likelihood a white supremacist. ![]()
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