History and Flags

See Obama

Obama Believes South Carolina Capitol's Confederate Flag Belongs In A Museum

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/19/obama-confederate-flag_n_7624034.html

My next door neighbor is a retired policeman who has over 8 American flags (i lost count) along his driveway.

In the American Civil War, flags were important. Anyone interested in this War should read the following:

http://loeser.us/flags/civil.html

http://www.ultimateflags.com/Confederate-Flag.html

>1 Urquhart:

The loeser.us site is interesting, but there is some blatant mythistory among the factual assertions. For instance, the Union "Irish Brigade" has acquired a legendary past that is naively repeated here, e.g., "the rebels always knew when an attack was coming because the green flag with the golden harp of old Ireland was always at the head of every Union charge for the remainder of the war."

A moment's reflection would lead one to realize how absurd that last sentence is.

The Irish Brigade was the subject of a podcast episode that stuck in my mind, but I can’t find a link. I believe it was one by the Bowery Boys, who do a pretty good job with New York City history.

As the link to Ultimate Flags shows the "stars & bars" is only one of many battle flags used by the confederacy. Why the focus on this banner in particular? The "stars & bars" was the battle flag flown by General Nathan Forrest Bradford. Bradford is most remembered for the Fort Pillow massacre where he allowed or ordered the execution of Union POWs. Today it would be a war crime. Post war he is best known as the founder of the KKK. That is the connection this particular battle flag celebrates. It became popular in the the 1920s when the Klan experienced a resurgence and again post Brown V Board. Now, after the election of President Obama the banner of hate and fear is again front and center.

When ever the Powers That Be feel threatened they stir up fear and hatred in their constituents. When I started reading The Earl of Louisiana I did not expect to see racism play such a big part in Earl Long's fall from power but Liebling managed to point it out without being heavy handed about it.

>3 TLCrawford::
Well, this is interesting! The commander at the Battle at Fort Pillow was Nathan Bedford Forrest for the CSA, and a man from Forrest's home county in Tennessee, Major William F. Bradford, took command of the Federal forces there after the death of the original Northern commander Lionel F. Bradford. Don't mean to be viciously pedantic here, just a little disambiguation. I wonder if the two men did know each other, and if that had an effect on the battle. Forrest's life pre-CSA years might have left him with some shameful episodes to live down...

#4

Thank you for correcting the name I jumbled. I also misnamed the battle flag as the "stars & bars" that is in fact the nick name for one of, the third I think, the Confederacy's national flags.

Here on Vancouver Island, the Flag store isn't selling the Battle Flag any more, and many of the Tee shirt stands have jerked the CSA battle flag shirts from the racks this week. Small heritage to the sad deaths but something.

The speed that the confederate symbols are disappearing from southern capitals in unbelievable. Nothing other than President Obama's first election has surprised me more.

This morning on NPR they interviewed an owner of a flag shop in Texas who said he would keep selling the flag. An African American man came in white they were there and bought a confederate flag. The reporters interviewed him as he was leaving to find out why he bought it. He was going to burn it. Later they heard from the store owner again. He would no longer be selling the flags, his supplier pulled them out of their warehouse.

Even Alabama, the "Heart of Dixie," has removed the series of Confederate flags from the war monument on the Capitol grounds in Montgomery. All of them, not just the Rebel banner.

Of course, the "First White House of the Confederacy" still flies a flag a short distance from the Capitol. It's the house where Jeff Davis lived after being sworn in as Confederate president in Montgomery in 1861. And a bronze star set into the floor of the Capitol porch commemorates the spot where Davis stood for his swearing-in. We have the United Daughters of the Confederacy to thank for both mementoes, the preserved house and the star. And heavens, they just don’t see what all the fuss is about these days.

I wish the North revered its abolitionists and Civil War heroes with something like the passion of Southerners revering their defenders of horribleness. So bring back the Civil War flags—ours, up here.

>9 timspalding: I wish the North revered its abolitionists and Civil War heroes

Maybe if the war had been fought in the North, that would have happened.

When I was helping family go through some old boxes from my grandparents, we came across an daguerreotype photo of a great-great-something grand uncle, posing in the uniform of a Union soldier. We were all shocked, had no idea anyone in the family had fought. And in fact this particular relative had been sort of left out of the family accounts as if he just stopped existing. Someone is trying to find out if he survived the war, but it amazed all of us that no one had ever mentioned that anyone in the family had ever gone to war in the first place. There was this silence around it like the kind of silence that happens when you want to avoid talking about the sister who got herself pregnant out of wedlock.

Here in southern Ohio we have the Harriett Beecher Stowe house, the "little lady that started this war" according to Lincoln.

http://www.10best.com/destinations/ohio/cincinnati/mount-adams/attractions/harri...

The John Rankin House, abolitionist, friend of the Beechers, and author of

http://www.ripleyohio.net/htm/rankin.htm

On the river bank below Reverend Rankin's home is the John Parker house, there is now a bill in Congress to make it part of the National Park system. Parker was an amazing individual.

http://johnparkerhouse.org/

We have the National Underground Railroad Museum and Freedom Center

http://www.freedomcenter.org/

Levi Coffin, the self proclaimed "President of the Underground Railroad" has a house museum in Indiana but he spent his last years here in Cincinnati. I am not sure if that house still stands or even if their is a plaque. There was a monument put on his grave but I am not sure if that still exists.

Ulysses Grant was born just east of Cincinnati and grew up in Georgetown. There are many historic sites for him.

Apple Removes All American Civil War Games from the App Store Because of the Confederate Flag

http://toucharcade.com/2015/06/25/apple-removes-confederate-flag/

Swastikas in Nazi games apparently okay

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ww2-nazi-zombie-infantry-assault/id836470884

>12 cpg:

That's just a bit extreme. The Confederate flag was a part of American history, just like the song 'Dixie'.

And I believe the SC Confederate flag is in violation of Federal flag regulations, not that I expect anyone to file charges.

#13

I agree, this is not Germany, we can not outlaw an individuals freedom of speech. We can expect the government to not explicitly or implicitly endorse partisan causes. White supremacy banners do not belong on state government buildings any more than the Democratic Party banner should be flying over the White House.

On personal property anything goes. Personally I like it when people advertise their shortcomings, less drama.

A black friend here in 'Bama was on Facebook expressing scorn for Warner Bros.' decision to stop licensing toy replicas of the "General Lee" stock car from the Dukes of Hazzard TV series, because of the Rebel flag on its roof. (Rolling Stone reported it here.)

I tend to agree that this kind of behavior seems mindless and somewhat cowardly. It's also just the kind of thing that feeds the victim complex of certain southern whites who identify strongly with the flag.

I think that anyone who identifies strongly with that flag deserves to be made as uncomfortable as possible, although nothing they feel will ever come close to even a fraction of what they made others suffer. Dropping a toy with a racist symbol is turning them into victims, really? Well I hope they can cry up enough water to drown in it.

Primitive, hysterical iconoclasm is what yankees, the Taliban and the Islamic State bandits have in common. No sovereignty and no sense of proportion, no common sense, no sense of history.

The hysterically iconoclastic Yankees nevertheless let that crap flourish for 150 years. Perhaps they need more lessons in proportion, common sense, and "sense of history" from book- and people-burners and their unashamed sympathizers.

Yankees have been burning books and people ever since. Since 1898 they are predominantly doing it abroad, though. Not much sense in fighting the English but keeping their cant as well as their gun-toting Puritanic hypocrisy.

>17 Phlegethon99:-19:
about terminology:
The CSA-loving Americans are not "Iconoclasts" those engaged in destroying idols, but are "Iconodules" those involved in the worship of idols. In their case the idol is a flag and not an overtly religious image. The USA seems in the main to be at the moment indulging in their first wave of "Iconoclasm" regarding this particular image.

>16 LolaWalser:

On the suggestion that "anyone who identifies strongly with that flag deserves to be made as uncomfortable as possible": I used to feel that way until realizing that people identify with the Rebel flag for a wide range of reasons, detached from history and the CSA. Some are black southerners who have appropriated the symbol on their own terms. Others live outside the USA and have no apparent sympathy with slavery or white supremacy. As John Coski records in his book The Confederate Battle Flag, overseas, the flag is often just a flexible symbol of nonconformity.

So while I'm very sensitive to the use made of this rag by white supremacists and reactionary segregationists, including KKK terrorists, I think it's important to remember that a symbol is inanimate and its meaning is determined by context, as defined by the people who use it and those who respond to it.

FWIW — my first car was a 1978 VW bus. In humid southern weather the bus's vent fan often failed to efficiently defrost the windshield, so I needed a rag handy to wipe off condensation. I kept a small Rebel flag in the glove compartment for the purpose. It was always a conversation starter when a passenger for the first time saw me take it out and wipe the glass with it.

The flag was probably a souvenir of Stone Mountain Park, a place with an instructive history.

>21 Muscogulus:

I don't think it's possible to identify with a symbol like this "detached from history and the CSA." Most to the point, it is impossible to ignore what those symbols signify and communicate to the general public.

And, they can call themselves and their cause "rebels" and "rebellion" a million times over--what our ears hear is "slavers" and "slavery".

>22 LolaWalser:

Maybe this is an issue of semantics. Whether or not people "identify with" the Rebel flag in, say, Latvia, they do think it's cool to display it. (Obviously I'm not talking about everyone in Latvia.)

>23 Muscogulus:

I'd bet good money that anyone in Latvia who thinks displaying the slaver flag is "cool" is a Nazi (of which Latvia has no shortage). Which would rather prove than disprove my point about how Confederate symbols are parsed by the world at large.

This is inescapable:

>22 LolaWalser: "And, they can call themselves and their cause "rebels" and "rebellion" a million times over--what our ears hear is "slavers" and "slavery"

What true blue American patriots -- i.e., the ones who chant USA! USA! -- should hear is "traitors." The southern rebel worshipers should be as odious as "communists."

>25 theoria:

They probably would be, if it weren't for the black people in the middle--if it weren't something to do with them, I mean. If the CSA had been based on white feudalism instead of black slavery, who'd have any desire today to sing its glory?

(Although, the depths neoliberals can sink to have surprised me before...)

More...

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/29/push-remove-confederate-flag/

>24 LolaWalser:

Lola, you’ve made up your mind. Don’t let me confuse you.

>26 LolaWalser:

If George Fitzhugh, the Charlestonian "father of American sociology," had had his way, slavery would have been extended to menial whites as well. It was, after all, such a benevolent institution. </sarcasm >

More

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/south-carolina-charleston-confederate-flag-sta...

>28 Muscogulus:

Well, I would at least like to know whether we are disagreeing, or misunderstanding each other.

Perhaps I didn't get your "Latvian" example. I assumed you meant the display of the flag in Latvia. Did you not know that Confederate symbols have traction as symbols of white supremacy outside the US? Consider that Roof adorned himself with other such "international" symbol, the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. No "detachment" from history there; straight up vindication of it.

If you were questioning the recognisability of the flag to the Latvians, that is whether they know it on sight, I agree that probably not many do, but that's not the point--the point would be what they'd think about displaying it once they were informed about whose flag it is. And, trust me, assorted Europeans don't necessarily know more about the US than Americans about them, but you can be sure they'll know about the "war to free the slaves".

The point is, I'm certainly not disputing that there exist people in the South who think or say they think about the Confederate flag wholly and perfectly "detached" from history, but, really, I don't see how they can be other than unbelievably stupid or preposterously ignorant--either way, their stupidity and ignorance don't affect how others will judge them, or feel about those symbols.

NPR's Code Switch team, which covers race and ethnicity in the U.S., has this interesting essay on the different responses to the Confederate flag by northern and southern blacks: "It's like having a crazy family member": On southern black folks and the Rebel flag

The author describes his own shocked reactions to seeing ubiquitous Rebel flags in Virginia, a short drive from the nation's capital. But some black southern friends "thought we were all being a little precious about the flag."

Joel explained that in the South, there's a taxonomy for thinking about the flag. "If you see it on the bed of, like, some pickup truck, then it doesn't shake me," he said. "But if they do it to show you, 'Yo, this is who we roll with'..." {For example,} when Ben Carson, the black Republican presidential candidate, moved into a new home in Maryland, some nearby residents put up the Confederate battle flag on their own property. The message was hard to miss.

It's a good piece.

>30 LolaWalser:

Well, I would at least like to know whether we are disagreeing, or misunderstanding each other.

Disagreeing. I was referring to the display of the Rebel flag overseas, e.g. in Latvia. I cited Coski's book, which describes the use of the flag as a symbol of nonconformity, not just of white supremacy. On another thread I've mentioned black southerners who choose to claim the Rebel flag on their own terms. This is by no means common, but it suffices to refute the hypothesis that this thing always represents racist ideology.

Your stance, as I understand it, is that the Rebel flag always signifies white supremacy and/or endorsement of slavery, no matter where, when, how, or by whom it is displayed. You "don't see how" people who appropriate this flag for any purpose "can be other than unbelievably stupid or preposterously ignorant."

It's just a rag. People decide what it means. They don’t always decide the same thing. Often they make up their minds in ignorance (willful or otherwise) of its past. Or, in the case of Latvia, indifference.

I'd like to suggest that all this relativism is also true of the Stars and Stripes, but I don’t want to offend anyone's religious sensibilities. We have more than one flag cult in the US of A. Some people worship both "Old Glory" and the "Southern Cross," as irrational as that seems.

I'm glad the Confederate flags are coming down in southern capitals, and I hope they stay down. I abhor the use of the Rebel flag by segregationists and reactionaries. But having lived most of my life in places where this flag has appeared in almost every conceivable context, I can’t convince myself that it is an infallible sign of evil. Life is not that simple.

>32 Muscogulus:

My stance is that no one can pretend to exclude the white supremacist meaning from it the moment they show up flaunting the symbol anywhere in public. Including Latvia. And I'm really shocked you are claiming that they can. It was a symbol of a racist regime still venerated by racists who mourn its defeat, who still commit acts of violence against blacks. This is not arcane knowledge, this is something one can pick up from any outline of American history, and on a purely symbolic level, from any B-movie dealing with the period. On that background, existing among and next to people who not only are more or less racist, but some of whom are ready to commit extreme violence against blacks, how can anyone INNOCENTLY pick it up and display as a sign of... non-conformity? Non-conformity to what? Humaneness and decency?

But having lived most of my life in places where this flag has appeared in almost every conceivable context, I can’t convince myself that it is an infallible sign of evil. Life is not that simple.

It's not just a sign of evil (personally I dislike using moral categories whose religious overtones are inescapable in the bigoted culture of the South), but I'd say it actually is "that simple" a sign of the South's chronic bad condition. That the Confederate flag is "everywhere" is a sign of general badness--bad education, bad economy, bad social relations, bad outlook. I am grateful that I can say that in New Orleans at least I didn't spend five years with the Confederate flag jumping at me from every corner, but every time I saw it it was in context and on people whose affiliations and creeds were plain enough.

Not that the flag is necessary to ensure a racist system, of course. But it's such a blatant pointer of it, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at attempts to present it as having nothing to do with racism, with white supremacy.

Anyway, I'm sorry I dragged out a conversation that causes you discomfort (I'm not enjoying this topic either but it's an obsession), to end here's a link to a post by a white Southerner (young by the sound of him), who'll have no truck with the flag as a symbol of "non-conformity": On the rebel flag...

And that’s when the Rebel flag came back into the fold. A symbol for the belief that blacks and whites are different. That we have different places in the world. That we are divided. Even if you remove the horrific acts done in it’s name– That’s what the rebel flag has ALWAYS stood for. It’s what it will always stand for.

And that’s why it’s time for the Rebel flag to disappear.

Puzzled by the insistence of the Black student at the University of South Carolina of his right to display a Confederate flag in the window of his dorm room, I first assumed he was clueless about its meaning. I'm still not sure that assumption is incorrect, but then I remembered reading about the Gay men who started a group called Queer Nation ... deliberately wrapping themselves in that disparaging and offensive term to demonstrate that it had no power over them. It seems to have worked. Today the term "queer" seems to have lost most of its sting.

One would hope that was the student's intention, too, but I don't know.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-college-student-sparks-debate-han...

>34 Rood:

He sounds like an idiot. Now, if he can mobilise a GROUP of black people to think of the Confederate flag as a symbol of "Southern pride" (and, always I wonder, pride in what exactly?), your analogy to the reclaiming of slurs by homosexuals might be more to the point. Right now this is individual kookiness.

But regarding "queer", it's worth noting the term is by no means universally seen as "reclaimed", especially by the younger people. (I was lectured a couple times about it--and I used the term to describe myself.)

confederate-flags

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/sports/autoracing/nascar-asks-fans-to-put-away...

>35 LolaWalser:

Yes, I suppose "idiot" is a more appropriate term for the poor young fellow. However, having been called by the same term on at least one occasion, and knowing how the term can sting, I thought he deserved the benefit of the doubt. He is only a teenager, going through the School of Hard Knocks, and we really don't want to crush him, utterly, before he gets out of knee pants.

As for the lecture you received from the younger people, no doubt you used the occasion to educate them on the facts of life. I mean, what a challenge, and what an opportunity.

As regards the regard in which the Confederate Battle Flag is held in Canada, the Confederate battle flag was involved in the very unpleasant actions of the Canadian Airborne Regiment when it was deployed to Somalia on peacekeeping duties in January to April 1993. I'm, including material here from the Wikipedia Article as it is reliable (having checked it with an eyewitness to some of the evens described) and footnotable if you wiki "The Somalia Affair".
The "Canadian Airborne Regiment" was disbanded after the "The Somali Incident" and is a considerable blot on the otherwise high reputation of the Canadian Forces. I'm including the following direct quote from the Wikipedia article because I can't write directly and type legibly:
"..Only recently deemed a light infantry battalion, some leaders expressed concern that the Somalia mission did not fit the Regiment's mandate or abilities. The Airborne consisted of multiple sub-units drawn from each of Canada's regular infantry regiments. Later, LCol. Kenward suggested that the line regiments had offloaded some of their "bad apples" into the CAR. LCol. Morneault, the commanding officer of the CAR, declared the "rogue commando" unit unfit for service abroad and sought to have it remain in Canada. Instead, he was relieved of his command and replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Carol Mathieu.8 "
"...There had been recurring discipline problems, and an ongoing investigation into their base of CFB Petawawa as a hotbed of white supremacist activity in 2 Commando.9 This included the adoption of the Rebel flag as the commando's barracks-room decoration.10 The flag had initially been presented as a gift from American soldiers, and gradually became an unofficial symbol, although successive commanding officers had tried to ban its usage.6...."

Eventually two petty thieves, (Somalis), were shot to death, and a teenage PRISONER, was beaten to death, by the members of the Regiment. Some of the responsible soldiers were imprisoned and dishonourably discharged. The officers were disciplined and strongly pressured to resign, the Minister of Defense resigned, and the Canadian Airborne Regiment was disbanded, and its members dispersed. To paraphrase Doctor Phil "That's how that, worked out for them."
Southern Pride, in its full glory, is reflected in the actions of these non-Americans who chose to flaunt the Confederate Battle Flag.

I answered a Quora question about responding to people ("flaggers") who rely on the slogan, "If this flag offends you, you need a history lesson." My response is aimed at trying to break through to people, not to lecture them about how wrong they are. (Locking them all up doesn’t seem like a viable option, and there are a few wee jurisprudential problems with that — at least since George W. left office.)

Excerpt:

Sometimes, if you let people talk at length, they'll talk themselves out of some of their own views. But it almost never happens because you "talked them into it."

If you want to have this discussion, it requires patience and curiosity on your part about what your counterpart thinks, and why. If you don’t care about that, or if you’re afraid of being "influenced" by people you despise, then don’t even bother trying this.

…people often bring up the use of the flag by the Ku Klux Klan. Flag lovers expect this, and they will indignantly deny any sympathy with the KKK — which usually leaves things at an impasse. So don’t waste time on that.

What's far more important is the historic use of the Rebel flag by reactionary state governors and other officials.… southern governors brought back the battle flag as a symbol of defiance to desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1956.

Don’t corner your counterpart, who probably had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy.… don't indict your counterpart's ancestors as the moral equivalent of Nazis. If you're white, your forebears were probably just as casually racist as theirs. Nothing will be gained by insulting the dead.

http://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-given-a-history-quiz-to-people-with-t-shirts-bum...

>37 Rood:

As for the lecture you received from the younger people, no doubt you used the occasion to educate them on the facts of life. I mean, what a challenge, and what an opportunity.

No, I didn't. It was I who learned something useful on those occasions, and although I still like "queer" as a self-descriptor, I'm aware now that there is no consensus and others might find it inappropriate.

>39 Muscogulus:

What's far more important is the historic use of the Rebel flag by reactionary state governors and other officials.… southern governors brought back the battle flag as a symbol of defiance to desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1956.

That's THE issue as far as I'm concerned: withdrawing all official endorsement of the symbols of Confederacy.

I do find it ludicrous and grotesque that anyone can acknowledge this historical fact--that the Confederate flag not only marked a pro-slavery regime during the civil war, but that it was DELIBERATELY used long after it as a marker of CONTINUATION of racist attitudes--and yet claim people can, in fact, like the flag somehow apart from that.

But then what would the South be without its bollocksy absurdity...

Well given the number of skinheads I've seen flaunting the Confederate flag in Canada, with their fake Iron Cross tattoos, I'm not surprised at the photo....
"So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea
While we were marching through Georgia." The song that should always follow renditions of "The Bonny Blue flag."

>41 LolaWalser:

I assume that that is a picture from the KKK rally in front of the South Carolina capitol. I don’t know why anyone would expect anything but pathetic bids for attention from that evil clown troupe. But to generalize from them to — well, screw it, I don’t want to have this argument. I lack the patience to continually revisit the difference between understanding and condoning, insight and endorsement.

I'll just confess The Truth, shall I? The South is the exclusive home of racism and most other social ills. The South is pure evil alloyed with backwardness; the North is virtue, uprightness, progress and common sense. If racism exists in the North — and gracious, I'm not saying it does, but — it's the South's fault. It follows that the best way to combat racism is to demonize the South until all those rednecks and slack-jawed hillbillies are shamed into admitting how wrong they are.

Not that this will happen anytime soon, because, you know, those people are all so willfully ignorant, stubbornly voting against their own best interests. Probably inbred. Believing every word spewed out of the mouth of some preacher, or Fox News anchor, or talk radio blowhard. (No one outside the South listens to those people.) No critical thinking skills at all, unlike the rest of us.

The South is dragging us down. Shaming and blaming southerners is the only way forward. It has nothing to do with projecting our own unacknowledged racial demons onto the most alien-seeming region of the USA. Nothing whatsoever. California doesn't sentence black men to longer and more frequent prison terms; Georgia does. New York police don't gun down unarmed black men; that's just the South. Kansas doesn't have segregated housing. Missourians adore their African American neighbors. The problem is all with Alabama, Mississippi, and those other loser states with their damn flags.

There — the Truth has set me free. Glory hallelujah.

>43 Muscogulus:

I don't need to point out at length that nothing in your self-pitying tirade was warranted by anything I (or, as far as I can see, anyone else) posted here. I don't want to sound unsympathetic--I probably know how you feel, having experienced myself (and still do) not only personally undeserved but directly injurious (considering actual doings and history of my direct ancestors) recriminations on the basis of stereotypical representations of not one, but three "easily-blamed" ethnic groups.

And yes indeed, racism is America's problem, not just the South's, and it is a problem in every country with white-supremacist ideas, but in this thread we were talking about the symbolism of the CSA flag, hence postings on that topic (duh?) I also gave links to the thread in Pro & Con on racism generally in America, if you'd prefer a broadly focussed discussion.

That said, I think you also know very well that the argument "it's heritage, not hate" just doesn't wash. The photo I posted is not the only, but just another piece of evidence of it. I didn't even go looking for it (it popped up on my Tumblr dashboard), but since then I've seen plenty more in news.

Here's another, from the Guardian:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/193508#5220785

As I remarked elsewhere, why are the pro-flag crowds so homogeneously white? Why isn't this vexillological "Southern Pride" endorsed by masses of black Southerners? I hope the next time someone comes across a white person claiming "heritage not hate" they might get these questions put to them.

To paraphrase Hegel: Southern history is not the soil in which happiness grows.

>44 LolaWalser:

Lola, I surrendered. Enjoy your victory.

>45 theoria:

Well said. I wish I could say I recognized the Hegel, but I don’t.

Just watched a local showing of a PBS documentary on the Freedom Riders in 1961. I thought I knew that history, but the extent of the treachery of white leaders, especially in Alabama, is shocking. The extent of JFK's and RFK's cluelessness was also a revelation. I realized I was on the edge of my seat, even though I knew the story had a "happy" ending. More or less.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/

Afterwards, the biracial audience sat in a circle and talked about it. The conversation was somewhat prickly, as we were all emotional, most of us weren't well acquainted, and we didn't know how much we could trust each other.

One young woman got at the heart of the matter, I thought, when she pointed out how — after Klansmen fire-bombed the first bus, near Anniston, and beat the riders of the second bus bloody in the Birmingham bus terminal — the Fisk University students (Diane Nash and friends) who stepped up and rescued the Freedom Rides did so with a resolve to lose their lives if necessary. They made out their wills before they got on the bus to Birmingham or Jackson.

There is nothing easy about this. It's no wonder that we keep looking for distractions.

>46 Muscogulus:

I surrender too. Enjoy your smug bloody sarcasm.

Sometimes you guys kill me.

Confederate Memorials as Instruments of Racial Terror

(The New York Times, July 24, 2015)

The Confederate-flag-waving white supremacist charged with murdering nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church in June demolished the fiction that the flag was an innocuous symbol of “Southern pride.” This barbaric act made it impossible for politicians to hide from the fact that the Confederate banner has been a rallying symbol embraced by racists, night riders and white supremacy groups dating back to the 19th century.

This long-denied truth applies as well to Confederate memorials that occupy public space all over the South. Most were erected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Southern states were eagerly dismantling the rights and liberties that African-Americans had enjoyed just after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. These states unleashed a racialized reign of terror and shored up white supremacy by rewriting their Constitutions to disqualify African-Americans from full citizenship.

As nonpersons in the eyes of the state, black people had no standing to challenge the rush of Civil War nostalgia that led the South to stock its parks and public squares with symbols that celebrated the Confederate cause of slavery and instilled racial fear. Only in recent decades have black elected officials and some whites started to push back against the Confederate narrative of Southern civic life.

James Oliver Horton's book "Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory" has some interesting stories about when myth and fact collide in public space. Monuments to MLK on streets named for southern generals, seem to upset everyone.

> 50

Touchstone: Slavery and Public History

This website - http://battleflag.us - is an "online documentary," still being produced in stages, about the Confederate battle flag and its meaning to different individuals and groups.

I'm pleased with the focus, in one section, on the content of the 1860/1861 secession messages from four southern states, showing the prominence of slavery among the causes that impelled them to the separation. This cannot be repeated too often, as a majority of white Americans — nationwide — continue to parrot that "state's rights" was the cause of southern secession; that is, if they have any opinion at all on the matter.

There is an illustrated timeline of the use of the battle flag since 1948 as a symbol of white reaction against integration. One thing that might strengthen the presentation is a look at why this flag, out of the five or more most widespread "Confederate" designs, is the one that so many people now claim as the Confederate flag.

The site's short videos might be accused of highlighting fringe cases — a black "Virginia Flagger," a souvenir seller who calls himself "Wild Man" — but i think the effect is less sensational or voyeuristic in context. Some of the site content may already be familiar to some of you, as it has been picked up by Salon, The Root, Washington Post blogs, etc.

Was it the flag chosen to represent the CSA in "Birth of A Nation" the pro-KKK film directed by an Englishman?

David Wark Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky.

sorry, I recalled from a television show he was an immigrant.

>53 DinadansFriend:

Good question, although The Birth of a Nation (1915) is about the postwar Klan more than the CSA. The stills I can find show the Klansmen bearing crosses on shields and banners, somewhat reminiscent of crusaders. You can also see it on this poster.



The film does include a brief Civil War battle scene, but I don't think the flag plays an important role. I understand the scene portrays a "brother vs. brother" tragedy, with a Yankee soldier leaping to the aid of a mortally wounded Rebel.

The 1939 film Gone with the Wind certainly uses the battle flag to represent the CSA, but the context is a Confederate army camp. If you've seen the film, you probably remember the scene — a crane shot over a sea of wounded men, with the flag flying prominently above them and "Dixie" playing dolorously on the soundtrack. A real tear-jerker, or meant to be.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/notable-mississippians-join-chorus-to-change-st...

>56 Muscogulus::
(Pedant alert!) The scene in GWTW is the Atlanta railway station, not the army camp. :-)

>57 Urquhart:

The article is about a push by celebrities from Mississippi to change the state's century-old flag with the Rebel flag in the canton (upper left corner).



Mississippi was the first former Confederate state to incorporate the battle flag into its state flag, in 1894, and it is the only one to retain it. After it was discovered that the flag statute had been omitted from the state law code in 1906, leaving Mississippi with no official flag, the flag was reinstated as-is in 2000. Then a 2001 referendum was held on whether to replace the flag with this proposed alternative:



The old flag prevailed with 64% of the vote. It was apparently understood at the start that a referendum was all but guaranteed to end in such a result (as Rebel flaggers tend to favor referenda). According to the New York Times, arguments for the new design were similar to those being advanced in this latest appeal.

Successful efforts to remove Confederate symbolism are carried out at the top, without democratic input. And of course unsuccessful efforts to democratically erase a Confederate symbol only exacerbate the affected state's image problem.

There's a perception among activists that most younger voters couldn't be bothered one way or the other. Zeal for replacing the flag is strongest among black citizens old enough to remember the '50s and '60s, when the battle flag was a symbol of support for Mississippi's white supremacist police state.

Yet the reasons people vote against change are not all down to residual white supremacy or love for the Lost Cause. The NYT article suggests that a number of voters don't like being lectured by elites about what's good for them. Others find reasons to dislike the proposed alternative flag — and in truth, most committee-designed flags are difficult to admire. The 20-star canton in the proposed flag is generically pretty and has a clever symbolic scheme, but it doesn't really say "Mississippi" in a heartfelt way. True, most U.S. state flags don't do any better, with their almost indistinguishable "seal on a bedsheet" designs.

After 121 years with that accursed flag, Mississippi may have to go through a process something like Australia's and New Zealand's, as they try to reach consensus on a national flag that doesn't have a Union Jack canton. Good designs seem to percolate up from the bottom, with some help from government efforts to popularize alternatives without dictating one. New Zealand has advanced farther toward an alternative, with (as I understand it) many Kiwis displaying the Silver Fern in preference to the official flag.





For Australia's protracted wrangle over its flag, see Australian flag debate and the winners of an Ausflag design contest.

For a crash course in flag design principles, see 99 Percent Invisible or the related TED Talk by Roman Mars. (The short version: A great flag design should fit within a small rectangle, 1 inch x 1.5 inch. That's how it will look from the ground when flown from a flagpole.)

>59 Muscogulus: Yet the reasons people vote against change are not all down to residual white supremacy or love for the Lost Cause. The NYT article suggests that a number of voters don't like being lectured by elites about what's good for them.

I find it ironic how often white supremacists blame "elites" for their problems.

Americans do not like to publicly admit that they have "Elites". And they are ashamed to admit that their "Elites" include people like the president of their television networks, Hollywood Studio executives, the Kardashians, the President of the NRA, Donald Trump, a number of entertaining religious revivalists and Rus Limbaugh. These leaders are such an embarrassment, upon a moment's reflection, that they go into denial about the real "elite", and invent a supercilious, effete, and obviously well dressed and mannered group to hate, instead. This is the real heart of America. Sorry, but that's how it is for you.

I thought "elites" was just a synonym for "people who listen to National Public Radio."

>62 southernbooklady:

"Elites" was my shorthand, and I considered going into detail about it, but felt that the post was already getting too long.

NPR listeners, myself included, probably would fit into the category of resented elites in much of Mississippi (outside of Oxford, at least) — although I've been surprised to find out who listens to NPR here in Alabama, MS's eastern neighbor.

The celebrities now urging a new flag would probably also fit the category, despite their popularity.

This is a delicate subject, but the urge to feel resentment (of elites or outsiders) is often bound up with a sense of innate inferiority. Southerners are not oblivious to their states' position at or near the bottom of the socioeconomic heap, with relatively high rates of everything from divorce to tuberculosis. (Yes, the TB is coming back. And you probably thought that went away with the New Deal.) Statistics show us to be dumber, poorer, sicker, meaner, and more violent than Americans in other states. So what's wrong with us?

As a historian, I think a lot of our problems are bequests from the slave society our white ancestors were so proud of. I'm not alone in that, but it is not a popular analysis, nor is it a comforting one. Most southerners, black or white, don't have much of an answer at all, in part because we'd rather not face the question. So an easy workaround is to cultivate sensitivity to criticism and resentment of almost anyone who offers it. This is especially easy when Americans in other regions use the South as a handy scapegoat.

Southern intellectuals in the 19th century left us a legacy of biological determinism and skepticism about the possibility of human progress without the management of experts (e.g., eugenics). Whenever you encounter scientific efforts to explain away social inequities as having biological causes, you can probably trace the intellectual pedigree back to a white southerner. These doctrines became American, not just southern, by the turn of the 20th century. What's more, a book on my wishlist, Alabama in Africa, argues for the worldwide influence of "New South" race doctrines during the "Scramble for Africa" and related European and American imperialist adventures.

I suppose it's an ironic twist that some people now use those same determinist arguments to explain the South's laggard ways. Genetic deficiency. Inbreeding. Whatever it takes to justify the conclusion that those people are born that way and nothing can be done for them. Poetic justice, maybe, but it does tend to punish the innocent with the guilty.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Rebel flags and other CSA symbolism are coming down throughout the South. Andy Hall, writing at the Dead Confederates Civil War blog, describes the rebranding of the Dixie Cafe, a landmark eatery in Hearne, Texas.



The name "Dixie" will remain, but the "Johnny Reb's" moniker is being abandoned along with the flag-and-muskets imagery. Of course, restaurant owners say the move is not in response to recent events and had been in the works for months. Maybe so, but as Andy Hall comments, "Confederate iconography doesn’t square anymore with promoting one’s business to the widest possible range of potential customers."

Meanwhile in Sweden — a Quora user posted a question about the use of the Rebel flag image in Europe, as in this poster for an "American Car Show" in Uppsala:



I answered the question with yet another cite of John Coski's book and some thoughts that are informed by this thread. Short version: It's safe to assume that this is not a poster for a white supremacist car show. Instead, for casual appropriators of American pop culture, the Rebel flag is often just another campy American icon.

On reflection, this kind of appropriation is probably almost as upsetting to diehard neo-Confederates as it is to people who equate this flag with the swastika as a token of pure evil.

"Dead Confederates" recommends the latest issue of the quarterly Civil War Monitor, described here. It includes an essay on Confederate symbolism and the changing use of it by Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic.

I'm also tempted to look up Mark Grimsley's piece on the mythology surrounding Robert E. Lee's decision to join the Confederate Army — myths that are still going strong in 2015. Other articles also look interesting, even though I've never been a "Civil War buff." More like the opposite.

>65 Muscogulus:

Myths abound about Robert E. Lee, but at least he honorably resigned from the US Army. So Robert E. Lee 1, Kim Davis 0.

#66 He had a job lined up. Davis is unemployable now that everyone knows that she puts herself above the job. Whate ever happened to the Dashiell Hammett work ethic?

>67 TLCrawford:

the Dashiell Hammett work ethic

Please elaborate. I don’t know Mr. Hammett.

Dashiell Hammet was a thriller writer of the 1920's and 30's who worked in the USA. He is most famous for his three novels: "The Thin Man", "The Glass Key" and the towering "the Maltese Falcon". But his work ethic may not be all that a good parallel requires. He began by writing about 120 short stories, all in the thriller category in the space of Five years. Then came his five novels, the three above and "the Dain Curse" and "Red Harvest". 1934's "The Thin Man", was his last published work! Hammett recycled his short stories through anthologies, and got good deals with his reprints of the five novels, but didn't write again until his death in 1961.
He was a serious drinker and a member of the American Communist Party, so the blacklist may have had something to do with his output, or alcoholic decay..

# 68, #69 It is not his work ethic, it is the work ethic in his stories. Doing the job he was hired to do was everything to a Hammet character.

#70
Sounds like Marcus Didius Falco. Is there also a Lindsey Davis work ethic, or are all private detectives like that, dog with a bone types?

As it is a desirable human quality, especially in morality tales like detective stories, we prefer our detectives to be like that. I'm not sure about Nero Wolffe, but al the others are like that.