The Confederate Battle Flag in American History and Culture

Photo Essay The Confederate Battle Flag in American History and Culture by John M. Coski "The fact ofthe matter is the emblems ofthe Confederacy have meaning to Americans even one hundred years after the end ofthe Civil War. Now, in this time, in 1993, when we see the Confederate symbols hauled out, everybody knows what that means." —Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois The most controversial and ubiquitous of Confederate symbols today, as well as for the last half-century, is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—a blue St. Andrews cross emblazoned on a field of red. Certainly, in these times many people know what they think the battle flag means or at least what it means to them. To many African Americans, the flag means racist slurs and racist attitudes. To many Confederate heritage group members, on the other hand, the flag means the honor and memory of their ancestors and they resent efforts to assign any other meaning to it. Such is the controversy surrounding this most visible of all southern symbols. Because of its association with the Confederacy, the battle flag would be a subject of controversy today, even if it had been forever furled with the surrender of the Confederate armies in 1865. The flag was never the Confederacy's national flag, but was incorporated into the national flag in 1863, and carried by various units in the armies that defended the fledgling nation's existence. Over the past 130 years, the public's perception of the flag has largely been determined by its use. Until World War II, the flag had been used almost exclusively in Confederate memorial activities, such as reunions and monument dedications. Even then, many northern veterans and African Americans decried the continued display of a symbol that they equated with treason. The emergence of the Confederate battle flag (elevated in popular perception to the Confederate flag and erroneously dubbed the "Stars and Bars") as a fixture in American popular culture occurred in the 1940s. In the past half century, the flag has acquired a myriad of different meanings. It has served as a logo for the South and for those things southern, as well as a symbol of individual or collective defiance and rebellion, of racism and resistance to civil rights, of devotion to the principle of states' rights 196Southern Cultures and to a conservative political agenda, and of continuance of a Confederate heritage and the Civil War South. Throughout its life as a widely used symbol of popular culture, the battle flag has defied simplistic interpretation. In 1948, the flag was an unofficial symbol of the States' Rights ("Dixiecrat") Party, and thus was associated with opposition to civil rights. In that same year, the flag also enjoyed enormous popularity among college students in the South and became the unofficial symbol of the University of Mississippi (whose students carried it to the "Dixiecrat" convention ). In the next three years, a full-fledged "flag fad" swept the entire nation. Thus, even as the flag's ideological message was reinvigorated, other uses completely diluted or ignored that message. A similar confusion of messages occurred in the 1950s and 1960s when the flag became a familiar logo of the Civil War centennial celebration, as well as a popular symbol of anti-civil rights protest and a symbol of "rebels" and "rednecks" the world over. To understand current controversy surrounding the battle flag, it is necessary to examine how the flag has been used and perceived. For this purpose, The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., created the exhibition "Embattled Emblem: The Army of Northern Virginia Pattern Battle Flag, 1861 to the Present." After opening in Richmond in May 1993, the exhibition (reviewed in Southern Cultures, volume 1, number 1) traveled in 1995 to the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, S.C. Although not drawn from the exhibition, this photo essay is intended to achieve the same purpose: to show graphically how the flag has been used and perceived and to suggest the reasons behind the symbolic associations it has acquired. Whereas the photo essay has no intentional ideological interpretation, it does try to provoke—by juxtaposing images...