Having grown up in a small town in Alabama, I am incredibly familiar with Confederate imagery. Most prominent among these images was the Confederate flag. I've seen entire stores dedicated to this flag. I’ve seen it flapping on the back of lifted trucks and hung in the rooms of friends. I’ve seen it on front license plates and on hats, jackets, boots and so on.
As a Black man, it may not come as a surprise that I don’t really get it. When I’ve asked, I’ve always been met with responses that go along the lines of “southern pride” or “heritage over hate.” These justifications have never sat well with me. I still don’t believe that there is any good excuse for someone to fly the Confederate flag.
Firstly, there is no reason to laud the Confederacy today. The Confederacy was, put simply, a failure of an institution that barely lasted four years. They betrayed the United States and started the deadliest conflict in American history that caused more casualties than both World Wars put together. I’m often confused by those who claim to be proud patriots but still fly the flag of traitors to this country.
The Confederacy did not fight for an honorable cause. Contrary to what supporters may try to say, whether they espouse arguments of states' rights or noble soldiers, at the forefront of the Confederacy's conflict was slavery. We can even see in Mississippi’s secession document that its seceding was “thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” The history simply doesn’t support the false notion that the Civil War was caused by anything other than slavery. Confederate states were chiefly worried about the possibility of the abolition. All other concerns were rooted in that possibility.
The Confederate flag itself is inextricably linked to a history of white supremacy. The Confederate flag that we see today was first introduced as the Confederate battle flag. It was spawned from confusion between the original Confederate flag, The Stars and Bars, with the United States’ Flag, The Stars and Stripes. Later in the Confederacy's short life, the battle flag’s design was adapted into the national flag.
The first national flag of the Confederacy was often referred to as the "Stainless Banner." The Stainless Banner has the design that we see flown today put in the top left corner, and the rest of the flag is a plain white field. Although the original designer of the flag is disputed, one of the largest champions of the new design was William Tappan Thompson.
Thompson wrote, “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.” He also said that it represented “the cause of a superior race and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism.”
Although the flag which Thompson spoke about is not identical to the one seen today, it should be apparent that the design was attached to the same vitriolic and bigoted sentiments spewed by men like Thompson.
The flag saw limited use in the aftermath of the Civil War. Of course, being the symbol of traitors, its use was discontinued for a long while. The Confederate flag saw its reemergence around the early 1950s. The flag was repopularized for being one of the national symbols of the Dixiecrats.
For those unaware, the Dixiecrat Party (also known as the States’ Rights Democratic Party) was a short-lived political movement that formed as the once southern-led Democratic Party began to support desegregation. This party was one of the factors that led the South to flip from Democrat to Republican over the years to come.
One of the main tenants of the Dixiecrat Party's policy platform was, “We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program.”
Although this party claimed to value states’ rights, the only thing that the party at large seemed to agree upon was their hatred for integration and their love of white supremacy. The only states’ rights that they seriously contemplated in their platform was a state’s right to choose segregation.
So, with all of this history in mind, it is nonsensical to me that people would still cling to this flag as a symbol of southern pride today. This flag is not attached to anything that people should be prideful of. Instead, it is a symbol embroiled in a legacy of slavery and hatred. The South has plenty of things to be proud of. Cultural exports like food, music and sports jump to mind. But the legacy of slavery and oppression attached to this flag is not one of them.
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