It had only been a year since the young white supremacist Dylan Roof had murdered nine people at the famed historically black church. So it was eerie to attend the very same evening prayer session that he'd shot up and glimpse the persistent pocked marked evidence on the walls. Much was later made of Roof's web posts, particularly his ubiquitous photos with Confederate iconography. These set off a welcome national debate on the display of the secessionist battle flag and other southern civil war symbols. Few, however, took note of another theme in Roof's pictures and scrawling: Rhodesia.

Indeed, he had posed with the green and white flag of that now defunct minority white-settler Southern African regime which had once defied Great Britain and fought for maintenance of its own petit apartheid between 1965-1980. The country, eventually forced to accept black majority (more than 95% of the population) rule, is now known as Zimbabwe. Rhodesia has, in fact, taken on a sort of legendary nostalgic status for white supremacists in America today. Roof's website was even called "The Last Rhodesian." However, what no one seems to talk about was the degree to which the United States indirectly protected that white secessionist state and openly busted the United Nations' mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia.