After attacks, many Southerners fly different flag

The Charleston Post & Courier ^ | October 29, 2001 | ELLEN B. MEACHAM

[aomagrat]

Until recently, if you saw a red, white and blue flag sticker on a Southern pickup truck, odds were good that it was a Confederate flag.

That was before Sept. 11.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the once-prominent symbol beloved by both unreconstructed Southern partisans and Civil War buffs has been swamped in a wave of national unity.

American flags are popping up on cars, outside homes and businesses - and even on horse-drawn carriages in the city where the Civil War started.

In Charleston, unlike New York or California, the Stars and Stripes can often be seen displayed beside the controversial Confederate battle flag.

One local bumper sticker even has a message for Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network, "Terrorists: Your soul is the devil's and your butt's America's."

The sticker features a Confederate flag.

Another depicts both the U.S. and the Confederate battle flag and says "red-blooded American."

Area flag merchants say sales of Confederate flags have remained steady even as sales of U.S flags have increased.

"My American flag sales have increased 100-fold," Gary Shelton, president of 1abcstore.com in St. Simons, Ga., said. His Confederate flag sales are about the same.While it might strike some as inconsistent to fly the flag created by people who wanted to dissolve the United States next to the American flag during a time of national crisis, many in the region do not see it that way, says political science Professor Bill Moore of the College of Charleston.

"In general, I don't feel Southerners see it as inconsistent. You do have a few ultra-nationalists who would still like to secede from the Union. However, most of those who maintain a strong identity with the Confederate flag incorporate it into a historical context," he said.

In the Southerner's view, loyalty to the historical South is not necessarily incompatible with contemporary values as Americans, Moore said.

"Collectively, Southerners do tend to be stronger supporters of the military than their non-Southern counterparts and value a military career more," he said.

Also, because of limited immigration into the region and less exposure to different cultures, Southerners can be more parochial and suspicious of foreign populations than other Americans, and are thus more likely to support action on behalf of American interests abroad, he said.

Sen. Glenn McConnell is one of the brokers of the compromise that brought the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse dome to a monument on the Capitol grounds in 2000, and owns a Confederate memorabilia shop in North Charleston.

McConnell's sales of Confederate flags have continued and are unaffected by the terrorist attacks. He says he flies both an American flag and a Confederate flag and sees no inconsistency in his actions.

"We see it as a patriotic emblem of our ancestors, but the nation's moved on since then. We think our ancestors stood up for a Constitutional principle that was still considered an option back then - the issue of whether states can secede from the Union - and the issue was resolved on the battlefield. We had an unpleasant disagreement amongst ourselves, and it was settled. So now, if you punch at the United States, you've struck at all of us," he said.

Some Confederate flag supporters do embrace the flag as a separatist symbol. Before the attacks, neo-Confederate messages, like Southern independence, were said to be gaining traction, especially in the angry wake of several regional controversies. Debates about the removal of the flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, the changing of the Georgia state flag and a contentious vote on the Mississippi state flag riled Southern partisans and fans of Southern history alike.

In 1997, Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, wrote in one of his publications that "the American flag has, in fits and starts, come to stand for a corrupt central regime that increasingly visits upon its citizen-subjects expropriations that would have driven our ancestors to active resistance."

Hill said he considers himself an American, and he claims that Southerners are more American than people from other regions. He said the Confederate flag is the flag that truly represents states' rights and a Constitutional government.

On the other hand, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that also has been on the forefront in the battles over the public display of the Confederate flag, took a much different position.

After the attacks, the SCV's national commander-in-chief, Ed Deason, immediately issued a statement on behalf of its 30,000 members expressing sympathy and support of President Bush, Congress and the government and affirmed its intentions to "join all patriotic Americans."

That move is harmonious with the organization's mission, spokeswoman Lynda Moreau said.

"We were chartered over 100 years ago as a patriotic and benevolent organization. Our mission is to defend the good name of the Confederate soldier. The SCV does not advocate secession," she said.

Many of its current members are veterans who fought in the armed forces during wartime.

"They fought for this country, and they stand behind it. That doesn't mean they honor the Confederate flag any less. They honor both," she said.

The Rev. Joe Darby of the Morris Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Charleston, who is first vice president of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, views the issue differently. The NAACP continues its efforts to boycott the state because of the location of the flag on the Statehouse grounds and will raise it, as well as other issues, again in the next legislative session.

To Darby, the Confederate flag is a symbol of disunity in a time when the nation's citizens should come together.

"We need to be unified at a time like this. While I don't think everyone who flies it (the battle flag) is a member of a hate group, I would not fly it. When I see it, I see a symbol of white, antebellum unity. That leaves me out of the picture," he said.

Darby acknowledges that there are South Carolinians who see no conflict in flying both flags.

"What do I think when I see both flags flying together? I guess I rejoice that we live in a country where people can hold strange views," he said.

Since the Civil War, major events such as the terrorist attacks have moved Southerners toward a stronger view of themselves as Americans first and Southerners second, even if they created some subconscious tugs between regional and national loyalties along the way, writes Charles Reagan Wilson in his 1980 book "Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920."

"The Spanish American War and World War II provided the perfect backdrop for Southern ministers to identify again with the values of the American nation," he writes.

"In 1917 the raising of Old Glory on Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans became a symbolic event marking renewed patriotism. Ministers even wrote poems praising the flag, although acceptance of the prime symbol of national unity created a tension with continuing adoration for the equally potent Confederate battle flag," Wilson writes.

One Southern writer of the time, according to Wilson, suggested "that Southerners should still 'consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross'," but that it should be honored not as '"a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of a heroic epoch.'"

In Charleston, evidence of those competing loyalties still remains.

Until May, the Old South Carriage Company downtown displayed three flags, the United States flag, the state flag and the Confederate flag. However, the flags were stolen on Mother's Day weekend and have not yet been replaced, manager Kay Motley said. When they are replaced, one flag will still represent the Confederacy, but it will be another, less controversial flag, she said.

The company currently displays an American flag inside its barn and quickly put American flags on its carriages after the terrorist attacks.

"We're proud of our Southern heritage. Our company is named Old South, but we are patriotic enough to add American flags to our carriages at a time like this," Motley said.

[bluecollarman]

If you post the term you use to refer to African Americans will it get pulled because it is offensive?

Dude...so far you have called us racist, Nazis, ignorant, and more... where would your credibility lie on this PC issue? You know what really sucks? We probably voted exactly alike.

[DebtsPaid]

"Civil War" is a misnomer. Any literate person knows that it was the "War Between the States".

[hoot2]

Bama...HEART of Dixie...
Audio

[JMJ333]

Not once on this thread did I refer to it as a civil war. In all posts I said WONA--"War of northern agression."

[Howlin]

Really? My understanding was that preserving the union was the deciding factor for Lincoln.

My understanding was that Lincoln did NOT want to free the slaves, but he had to.

[Howlin]

That only proves that Germans are more intelligent than Southerners who fly the Star & Bars.

And that remark only shows you know not of which you try to speak.

[Howlin]

You just outed yourself.

Oh, he'll come for you now. I looked at his previous posts. He has a "thing" about gays. And everything else apparently. He's a classic disruptor-hater.

[clamper1797]

All the Stars And Stripes is is the flag under which Klinton perjured himself, Lyndon Johnson caused 58,000 GIs to die with his Gulf Of Tonkin "incident" that was a hoax - and the flag under which IRS bureaucrats threatened to prosecute my elderly middle-class mother unless she promptly paid $700+ in back taxes she never owed (they later admitted) in another of their snafus while Klinton was taxing naive native-born "Americans" like you to come up with $2 billion per year for restoring welfare for aliens.

These ARE SOME of the reasons that I fly the stars and bars next to my stars and stripes. As I said in my earlier post ... I am for the size and scope of a Federal government as described by the constitution. Over the years the federalies have wildly and UNCONSTITUTIONALLY expanded the fed government to a point that would NEVER have been accepted by our founders.

[Constitution Day]

"Like it or not your banner has been appropriated by some pretty crummy organizations and I don't hear y'all complaining about it much"

It took me a while to get back to you... I had already logged off when you replied to me.

I AM complaining about it!
As an SCV member I find it offensive for the KKK to use the Confederate flag. As an American, it's equally offensive for them to use the American flag.

The image you posted was from the "modern" KKK; even more of a joke compared to the old one, which was far more sinister.
I am not going to click on your links because I just don't care what they have to say.
Their ideology is as morally & intellectually bankrupt as communism to me.

The last Klan "rally" I saw on TV had all of, say, ten or fifteen people? Oooh... Really scary!

I will find the picture I have been referring to & post it.

[Hans Moleman]

My my, looks like I touched a nerve. The truth hurts indeed!

[Twodees]

Yes, ma'am, he fits the description perfectly. Let him come. Nobody has been able to run me off yet. ;-)

[Constitution Day]

Non-Sequitur:

re: your posts #19, #22:
I'll see your t-shirt and raise you a few photos.

"The Ku Klux Klan reached the height of its membership -- 4.5 million -- in the 1920s, and, then as now, the Klan tried to wrap its racism and hatred in the flag and patriotism. Displayed at the old fairgrounds in Evansville (Indiana?) in 1925 by Rock County KKK members, the flag pictured is 104 feet long and weighs 345 pounds."

KKK rally, unknown date

Early KKK poster.

Ohio, 1924.

Virginia, 1925.

D.C., 1926.

Long Island, New York, date unknown.

D.C. again, 1952.

Wow! This one's in color; must be recent!
(BTW- what a crowd they have, huh?)

Klan initiation. Where *is* that Confederate flag, hmmm?

Check the sign out.

-----------------
N-S:

I could post many, many more.
However, I really don't want to waste JimRob's bandwidth on their trash, and I think I made my point.

Am I saying that the American flag is a "symbol" of racism? NO.
Am I saying we should take it down from every public building just because a vile group like the KKK has appropriated it for their own purposes? NO.

I fly BOTH flags and am very proud to be both a Southerner AND an American. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Don't misunderstand me or put words in my mouth.
I am certainly no racist or KKK member, and your being "angered by (my) implications" will not make that true.

Being married to a Jew, I don't think I would last very long as a KKK member.

As the photos prove, in your own words,
"...your banner has been appropriated by some pretty crummy organizations and I don't hear y'all complaining about it much."

CD

[JMJ333]

Since you didn't answer the question I'll ask it again. If you drive around with an american flag on your car are you promoting the bombing of aspirin factories in the Sudan? Are you promoting the deaths at Waco? Or does it have more meaning to you? What about post 113? Are those pictures representative of why you fly the flag?

Try getting a clue.

[aomagrat]

Ummmm...I hate to rain on your parade but this whole confederate flag thing in the south has been and still is a class issue.

That's riduculous. Pride in Southern Heritage crosses all class boundries. You can see Confederate flags on every vehicle from rusted out pickups to five figure SUV's, and from small houses to large multi-story mansions. It's not a "class" thing, it's a way of life.

[Rebelbase]

Re #113. Thanks for posting those pix.

[Constitution Day]

Glad to do it. Hope lurkers see them as well.

FRegards.

[JMJ333]

Ummmm...I hate to rain on your parade but this whole confederate flag thing in the south has been and still is a class issue.

Is that why 40% of black folks in Mississippi voted to keep the confederate flag flying at the state capitol?

They voted that way because they have family who fought valiently in that war as well.

Deo Vindice.

[Non-Sequitur]

What no thanks for the picture and links that I posted? Mine where all more recent than the majority of his.

[LonePalm]

That Charles De Gaulle's sure was a quotable SOB.

I didn't know DeGaulle said that. "Garde la Foi," has been the family motto since long before DeGaulle's grandfather was born.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LoanPalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)