People are still up in arms about the symbolic value of what is known today as the Confederate flag.
The flag was used during the latter part of the American Civil War as the battle flag of the Confederacy. It later became one of the symbols of the Klu Klux Klan and the Dixiecrats – a pro-segregation State’s Rights Party of the late 1940s.
The basic argument is whether the flag represents a heritage of Southern pride and a rise against tyranny, or if it represents hate and racism against African-Americans.
One of the reasons this controversy resurfaced was a tragedy that happened on June 17. A White supremacist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Afterwards, photographs surfaced on the Internet of him posing with the Confederate flag. By June 23, Walmart, Amazon, Sears and Ebay declared they would stop selling Confederate flag merchandise.
Why are there still varying opinions on this issue? One would expect a simple history lesson over the flag would end the controversy. But that is forgetting one thing – history is an interpretation of the past.
Most people recognize the flag as a symbol for the Confederacy, but many disagree on what the Confederates stood for and the cause of the Civil War – which is still one of the most debated subjects in American history. On one hand, the Confederacy was made up of the slave states, so some people view the Confederacy in a very negative light. Others think of the war as a rebellion against tyranny and for states’ rights.
“To those 70 million of us whose ancestors fought for the South, it is a symbol of family members who fought for what they thought was right in their time, and whose valor became legendary in military history. This is not nostalgia. It is our legacy,” Ben Jones, chief of heritage operations for the Sons of Confederate Veterans said in a New York Times opinion article.
And the fact that ancestors fought was a valiant thing, but also we don’t want to celebrate when someone gets something wrong, just because they thought it was right at the time. Otherwise, we would be celebrating the Holocaust as well as many other atrocities in history. I know that sounds harsh, but many people echo my thoughts, including President of the Mississippi State Conference of NAACP Derrick Johnson.
“Hate should not be a part of anyone’s heritage,” Johnson said.
If you claim the flag is not a symbol of hate, do some personal research of the creator of the flag. Confederate politician William Porcher Miles designed the flag in 1861. Miles was a pro-slavery extremist who called slavery a “Divine institution.” The original flag was mostly white and Miles himself dubbed it the “White man’s flag,” according to CNN. He was inspired from a flag used at the 1860 South Carolina Secession Convention, which would become the first state to secede from the Union.
Now some argue the war wasn’t even about slavery, and was solely about states’ rights — but to say slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the war is overlooking a lot of history. One reason why the Confederacy wanted states rights was to keep the slave trade in motion.
Also, it’s hard to argue the point that the flag is simply about the heritage of the Confederacy and not about slavery because the flag wasn’t even the original Confederate flag. The original was called “stars and bars,” and greatly resembled the U.S. flag at the time. Next the “bonnie blue flag” would be used before what we know now as the Confederate flag. So if you like the Confederate flag simply because you support the Confederacy, think again or get the original flag instead of parading around ignorantly.
The flag was actually not used as a political symbol until 1948 – over 80 years after the war ended, according to this video over the history of the flag. The flag made reappearance in 1948 with the rise of the pro-segregation State’s Rights Democratic Party “Dixiecrats.” They rebelled against Truman’s Equal Rights Movement – the Confederate flag would gain most of its negative connotations from this group. And those who opposed integration would use the flag as their symbol for the next few decades.
To say the Confederate flag is simply a symbol of Southern pride, however noble or ignoble a cause that view may be, is disregarding all the time it was used as a symbol of opposition to the Civil Rights movement, and the fact that, in part, it was both created and used by racists in the Civil War who were trying to further slavery in America – whether or not you believe that slavery is the main cause of the Civil War.
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