"Family history" only became a plausible rationale because of a devil's bargain. That use of the flag is the crux of the "heritage, not hate" argument: that the Confederate flag is simply about honoring the South's past, its dead, and its culture.Īs a white woman who still flies the flag in a historically black South Carolina neighborhood put it, it's about "family history."īut the flag's meaning was never really innocuous.
At first, white Southerners mostly displayed it at Civil War cemeteries and at memorials and veterans' reunions. Like other vestiges of the Confederacy, the flag outlived the Civil War. In 1863, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger wrote that the flag's Southern cross pointed to "the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave" - the Confederacy's hoped-for expansion of slavery into Latin America. As historian John Coski writes in The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem, Southerners weren't shy about enlisting the design in the cause of white supremacy. The flag was based on the saltire, a common flag symbol sometimes called the Southern cross. The Confederacy itself was founded to preserve slavery and promote white supremacy (see, for example, Mississippi's declaration of secession : "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world," or the speech from the Confederacy's vice president that declared the Confederacy's cornerstone "rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition").Īnd from the moment the design of its best-known flag was proposed, some Southerners began imbuing it with the symbolism of their cause. The third was discarded because the white got dirty easily and could resemble a flag of surrender. The first was discarded because it looked too much like the American flag. The Confederate battle flag was one of several flags used during the Civil War. The Confederate flag has always been about white supremacy The only thing that has changed is how the rest of the country sees the cause it represents. The history, though, is clear: from the Civil War through the civil rights movement, the flag has always been about white supremacy. Haley nodded to supporters of the flag in her speech, saying that for many, the flag was "a way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during the time of conflict. Removing it requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature. In the aftermath of a shooting apparently motivated by white supremacy, even as South Carolina's state flag and the American flag were lowered to half-staff, the Confederate flag continued to fly. "The events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way," Haley said. Nikki Haley said Monday that it was time South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol grounds, in the aftermath of a shooting that killed nine people at a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
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