The Confederate flag is one of the most controversial, inflammatory icons of American culture, and even has a significant presence abroad. What causes people to feel so strongly about the emblem of a regional entity that ceased to exist over 130 years ago? What relevance does such a symbol have in our society today? What insight into our culture can we gain by examining an icon such as the Confederate Flag?
The Confederate flag still flies high above the South Carolina Statehouse, and it has sparked an enormous amount of debate. The flag was placed above the State House in 1962 as a response to the Civil Rights movement. Blacks in South Carolina see the flag as a symbol of racism and slavery. Many Southern whites see the flag as a symbol of their proud, distinctive heritage and the gentility of the Old South. In November of 1996, Governor David Beasley delivered a televised speech to the state saying he thought the flag should be taken down. Beasley had been elected as a pro-Confederate flag candidate and strong ally of the Christian coalition. Beasley claimed that he had had a religious experience in which he concluded that the symbol had come to be the cause of too much strife, saying that the, "plowshare has been turned into a sword." Beasley's argument was not that the flag was hurting business (although that could be somewhere behind his argument), but one of Semiotics.
Beasley: The Confederate flag flying above the Statehouse flies in a vacuum. Its meaning and purpose are not defined by law. Because of this, any group can give the flag any meaning it chooses. The Klan can misuse it as a racist tool, as it has, and others can misuse it solely as a symbol for racism, as they have.
Beasley asserted the basic premise of Semiotics that signs and symbols have no intrinsic value but only carry that value which is assigned to them by people. Many of Beasley's fellow Republican party members like State Attorney General Charles Condon are opposed taking the flag down. Condon and other flag supporters like State Senator Glenn McConnell point to a monument on the Statehouse grounds for a definition of the flag. In the words of McConnell, the monument reads: "in the hopelessness of the hospitals, the despair of defeat, and the short sharp agony of struggle, the South Carolinians who answered the call of their state did so in the consolation of the belief that here at home, they would not be forgotten." Charles Condon says that he and the Governor both the believe the flag is a symbol of honor and does not understand the Governor's initiative to take the flag down. Religious groups have gotten involved as well, wrestling with the question of which side of the issue is morally right. Public opinion in South Carolina seems to be with keeping the flag right where it is. Many political experts in South Carolina and even those who know very little about politics expect the flag issue to hurt Beasley in his reelection campaign in 1998. Since the Democratic party wields very little political clout right now in South Carolina, Beasley's only real competition will come from his own party. Thus, the Confederate flag is fast becoming the most important issue in the race for Governor.
Controversies of the sort, though perhaps not of this scale, are visible all over the South. University of Mississippi football games have become a hotspot for turmoil. Ole Miss, a name with slave connotations in and of itself, is a school rich in Old South tradition. Students traditionally wave Rebel flags at home football games, but recently, some University officials have spoken out against it. The football coach believes that a stadium full of Confederate flags makes it difficult for the University to recruit minority athletes. Professor of civil rights law Barbara Phillip Sullivan feels the flag is a symbol of, "hate speech because its use in the South was a use intended to convey the ideology of white supremacy and the inhumanity and subordination of African-Americans." She believes the flag makes African-Americans feel uwelcome at Ole Miss. The Administration of the University has asked fans not to bring their flags to the games, believing that it castes an unfavorable image on the school. Of course, there are the die hard Ole Miss traditionalists who think it almost a sacrilege to have an Ole Miss football game in Oxford without the Confederate flags waving. History professor David Sansing sums up the situation: "There are at least five or six different groups to whom the flag is very important, but for very, very different reasons. It's one of the most powerful images certainly in American history." Once again, the heart of the argument lies in Semiotics. Controversies have also arisen in Maryland and North Carolina over images of the flag on special liscence plates, and in Georgia and Mississippi over the image of the battle flag within the state flag. Countless other individual skirmishes abound across the South.
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The banner which we now recognize as the Confederate flag was conceived as a battle flag after the first battle at Mannassas. The original flag, the stars and bars, proved to be too similar to the Union flag for soldiers to recognize in the haze of battle. [/FONT]
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[FONT=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]The Stars and Bars
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The new, easily distinguishable battle flag consisted of a square blue St. Andrew's cross, on a red background. The cross contained 13 stars, one for each of the 11 states that seceded plus one for both Kentucky and Missouri.
The rectangular shaped flag that is most common today is called the Navy Jack flag. Now that we have established the technical origins of the flag, the task is to trace how it has arrived at the status it holds today. The flag was a symbol of the Confederate States of America, the losing party in the Civil War. Volumes upon volumes have been written about the causes of the Civil War, but most historians agree slavery was the one single issue without which the war could have been avoided. The war was not fought over slavery in the South, but slavery in the territories, especially those acquired from Mexicoin 1848. Southerner's feared any kind of government regulation of their "peculiar institution," and saw the outlawing of slavery in the territories as a sure sign that slavery in the South would soon end as well. Southerners became strong advocates of state's rights and sympathized with all those who were persecuted for being different, like the Mormons. Most historians will also agree that the war was not fought over concerns about racial inequality. Abolition was never a widely popular movement, even in the North, in the years leading up to the Civil War. The primary source of anti-slavery sentiment in the North grew from the fact that slavery was incompatible with free labor. If slavery was allowed to exist in the territories, working class white citizens would simply not be able to compete. What wage worker could compete with a slave? Northerners generally wanted the territories to be a place where
white people could go to earn an honest living, without the menacing negroes. The South, on the other hand, looked at the "wage slavery" in the North as worse than slavery in the South. Southerner's thought that at least they took care of their slaves even in old age or when they were not able to work. So, at the time of the Civil War, the North and South were generally in agreement on white supremacy.
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The issue of race and the Confederate flag is both the simplest and the most important factor in the controversy. Blacks, unlike whites, have a generally unified opinion on the matter. They see the flag as a symbol of a racist past, a past of servitude, slavery, and second-class citizenship for African-Americans, and they have no desire to revel in the so-called glory, bravery, and refinement of such a heritage. Blacks are not apt to have any fond idealistic remembrances of the Old South or harbor any sympathy for the Confederate cause. The fact that the symbol still lingers and has such a prevalent postion in society over 130 years after the Civil War is in and of itself evidence to blacks that racism is alive and well. The flag is the banner of white supremacy groups in the United States, like the Ku Klux Klan, and is even used abroad by neo-nazi skinhead groups. African-American scholar Mwangi Kimenyi offers that, "the Confederate flag is the semi-official symbol that represents the mark of 'old all white' traditions and the exclusionary feelings of whites towards blacks" (52). Blacks see the flag as a marker that "stands in the schoolhouse door," keeping them from having the rights that are theirs as Americans. Whites retaliate with the argument that hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan also misuse symbols like the cross, but that doesn't stop churches from using crosses. Other whites claim First Amendment rights, saying that no matter what the flag symbolizes, the "true friend of liberty realizes we must allow...the Confederate flag," to be flown wherever individuals choose (Larson). [/FONT]
