You might recognize this as the Confederate flag.
But actually?
This is the Confederate flag.
And this.
And this one too.
The symbol associated with the Confederacy and seen as an emblem of racism, oppression, and white supremacy
was never officially recognized as a flag for the Confederate States of America.
So where did this flag come from
and why are there so many people using it?
To answer that question, we'll have to go back.
About 160 years back to the Civil War.
Long story short: from late 1860 to early 1861, 7 states known as the Deep South voted to secede from the Union.
Those states would form the Confederate States of America,
and on April 12, 1861, with the attack on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces, the Civil War began.
As the war continued into the spring, 4 more states joined the Confederacy.
Side note: We're going to see the number 13 a lot.
Only 11 states seceded, but with large political factions of secessionists in Missouri and Kentucky,
they were often included in the Confederacy.
So obviously when trying to form a new nation, you need a new flag
and the Confederate Congress's Committee on the Flag and Seal was on the job.
The chairman, a man named William Porcher Miles put forward this idea:
a red field with blue bars crossing diagonally,
along with white trim on either side,
and emblazoned with seven stars representing the slaveholding states.
This design was actually rejected and the Committee went with the "Stars and Bars" instead.
This flag went through four designs of between 7 and 13 stars as more states seceded.
The Stars and Bars flew from March 1861 through May 1863—a little over two years—
but was actually quite unpopular and had issues on the battlefields being confused for the Stars and Stripes.
Now, looking at these two flags side-by-side, they look obviously similar.
Red and white stripes with white stars on a blue canton.
But there are obvious differences.
What you have to remember is that flags don't necessarily look like this out in the real world.
They tend to look like this.
And when a limp flag shares characteristics with another,
it's easy to see how they could be confused on the battlefield.
So, after the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861,
Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard wrote that he wanted the flag changed,
"or to adopt for my command a 'Battle flag'".
Luckily, his aide was William Porcher Miles,
and his design came back into play.
It quickly became the preferred flag of the Confederacy, despite never being the official emblem.
However, it was widely adopted by the Army of Northern Virginia
and was often referred to as the "Southern Cross".
The other two national flags were actually introduced after popularization of the Battle Flag:
the Stainless Banner, which on the field could easily be mistaken for a white flag of surrender;
and the Blood-Stained Banner to differentiate it from a flag of truce.
Both incorporated the Battle Flag into their designs
and here you can see all four flags on a lithograph from 1898.
The three men in the center are Generals Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and P.G.T. Beauregard.
President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis is at the top
and the rest are Confederate army officers.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, the Battle Flag came to be associated with Confederate groups
like the Sons of Confederate Veterans,
the United Daughters of the Confederacy,
and the Ladies' Memorial Association.
The LMA actually commissioned 15 Confederate stained glass windows from Louis Comfort Tiffany
(yes, of that Tiffany)
for a church in Petersburg, Virginia, which included this piece.
Tiffany cut the LMA a deal amounting to $350 per window,
down from $1,700 per window.
Mississippi adopted it as the canton to their flag and used it for over 100 years until 2021.
During World War II, some troops from the South,
or troops that included a majority of Southerners would carry the Battle Flag into the field.
In 1948, the newly formed States' Rights Democratic Party, aka the "Dixiecrats"—
a very short-lived segregationist and white supremacist political party from the Deep South—
adopted the flag as their symbol.
With the Supreme Court's 1956 ruling on Brown v. Board of Education,
Georgia incorporated the Battle Flag into the design of its state flag as a protest against desegregation of schools.
In the 1960s, protestors raised the flag at University of Mississippi and other college campuses for the same reasons.
During this era, the flag became associated with the third and current incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan.
The first two went into decline after government intervention.
It was used in popular movies and shows like Gone with the Wind,
Smokey and the Bandit,
The Dukes of Hazzard,
and even Thelma & Louise.
Musicians like Tom Petty, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Kid Rock have used the flag on tour with them.
By the 1990s, conversations about the flag shifted towards the appropriateness of its use,
signaling its decline in popularity.
But in 2015, something happened that brought it screaming back to our collective consciousness.
"Good morning America. Breaking news: deadly church shooting."
"Tragedy in Charleston."
"At least nine people killed overnight in a massacre in a historic black church."
Images of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina,
showed him prominently displaying the Confederate Battle Flag.
This led to immediate condemnation of the racist emblem
and calls for discontinuing its display in public, including:
in parks, state and federal buildings, retail sites, churches, and other corporations.
Despite this, the flag is still used with much prominence today.
Supporters claim that the flag is a symbol of Southern heritage, not racism,
though political scientists disagree,
and the Flaggers movement aims to make it as visible as possible.
These states still use a Confederate symbol in one way or another in their official emblems.
And while over 160 Confederate symbols were removed in 2020,
there are still about 700 monuments standing,
including the Confederate Memorial Carving—
a relief carved into the face of Stone Mountain, just 5 miles outside of Atlanta's city borders.
The good news is that the push to remove these symbols continues to grow.
And public opinion on the flag has now shifted to a majority of Americans recognizing it as a racist symbol.
Only time will tell if the flag will be lowered for good.
Thanks for falling down that rabbit hole with me.
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