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What Would Robert E. Lee Do? Race, Religion, and the Debate over th eConfederate Battle Flag in the American South
- University of Virginia Press
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The two most important events in the history of the American South are the Civil War of the 1860s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. While race clearly played a dominant role in these two historical upheavals, the region’s deeply felt religiosity was also central to both events (Miller, Stout, and Wilson 1998). White Southerners viewed the Civil War in theological terms, as a war against Northern apostasy (Webster 2004). As a result, they understood their cause to be righteous and worth any and all sacrifices. Churches and religious leaders also played a central organizing role in the civil rights movement in the last half of the twentieth century. The extreme levels of segregation in the South’s churches led to the development of African American leaders in the community’s religious institutions, and these leaders provided critical direction for the movement (Webster 2000). This reality led many black churches to becoming targets of violence by those championing the preservation of Jim Crow and racial segregation across the region (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990). Today, debates over the symbols associated with both the Civil War and civil rights movement underscore how race and religion continue to intersect in the region’s political discourse (Webster and Leib 2008). While these debates have pertained to a broad array of issues, the most dominant controversies have been over the proper interpretation of the meaning of the symbols, the memorialization of important notables, and the recognition of historical events associated with the short-lived Confederate States of America (1861–65) (Leib 2002, 2004; Webster 2004). No debate in the region has been more vitriolic than the long-running controversy over the meaning of the Confederate battle flag (Leib and Webster 2007). Because of its use during both the Civil War and civil rights movement, the flag has become imbued with layered meanings that reflect both What Would Robert E. Lee Do? Race, Religion, and the Debate over the Confederate Battle Flag in the American South Gerald R. Webster and Jonathan I. Leib 104 Gerald R. Webster and Jonathan I. Leib racial and generational differences of interpretation. Thus, a recent poll in South Carolina found that more than 70 percent of African Americans viewed the battle flag as a “symbol of racism and hate” (Shenin 2007). Yet the battle flag flies at a Confederate memorial on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol (Webster and Leib 2001). Similar polls in other states have found substantial contrasts in interpretations of the flag’s meaning, with most native white southerners viewing the battle flag as an honorable symbol of heritage and sacrifice and most African American southerners viewing the flag as emblematic of the region’s efforts to maintain slavery in the 1860s and segregation in the 1960s (Leib 1998). Discussions over these mutually exclusive views have resulted in harsh rhetoric, given the racial and religious overtones to the debate. Controversies over such symbols are clearly racialized, pitting white and black southerners against one another in passionate debates. It is equally true that some white southerners have found it helpful if not reflexive to intertwine the region’s fundamentalist religiosity with Confederate myth to support their spirited defense of Confederate icons as symbols of white southernness and the righteousness of antebellum culture. Using critical race theory and a discussion of religious traditions in the South, this essay seeks to explain why these debates are so polarized and divisive. Before our discussion of critical race theory and southern religious traditions, however, we provide a short history of the Confederate battle flag. A Brief History of the Battle Flag In 1861, the provisional government of the Confederate States of America (CSA) formed a “Committee on Flag and Seal” to propose a national flag for the emerging country. The committee reviewed hundreds of proposals, with many bearing a strong resemblance to the United States national flag, or “Stars and Stripes.” A substantial number also included religious symbols such as the Christian cross in their design (Cannon 2002). The eventual selection, referred to as the “Stars and Bars,” was similar in design to the U.S. flag. Horizontally, the flag was broken into three stripes—red at bottom and top, and white in the middle. A blue canton on the staff end included a star for each member state of the CSA (Coski 2005). The similarity of the First Flag of the Confederacy to the U.S. national flag soon created problems on battlefields since the flags could...