LAND OF THE FREE?

"A chasm still separates the black people of South Carolina, from what Rev Jackson calls their white "brothers and sisters". It is a deep division, as was apparent after a short parade from the porch of Rev Jackson's church to the domed statehouse, where the marchers congregated in the shadow of the South's most defiant symbol of white supremacy, the battle flag of the Confederacy. Across the street from where the marchers were honouring the assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr, a small group of white secessionists jeered. They spoke of keeping alive the memory of the "lost cause", a euphemism for racial domination. Uniformed police and secret service agents mingled with the crowd, watchful for trouble." (Independent, 22 January) RD