And on July 26, 1934, Mrs. Hamish McKeever of Snakebit, MS, hung a decorative plate emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag over her mantlepiece. So there.
The fact that some Alabama frat boys once created an overnight fad when their football team won really doesn’t persuade me that it was a ubiquitous and neutral icon, or that the flag’s symbolism had been rehabilitated by the time Alabama raised it over their state house in 1963 (maybe they were just celebrating their team’s 1926 victory a little late, but I think it was something else). Just to clean up a little: Brown v. Board – 1954. Georgia incorporates the Confederate battle flag into its state flag: 1955. South Carolina follows: 1962. Alabama raises the flag alongside its state flag: 1963. Dixie Oil motto: “Serving the South since 1959.” Dixie Crystals logo: a red stripe crossing a blue stripe – not even a reasonable stunt double for what we’re talking about.
Speaking of stunt doubles. Sampiro, I assume you’re just being funny and clever in your discussion of the flag in movies. I mean, use of the flag in nationally popular films might tend to indicate the image had transcended politics and achieved a simpler role as a generic symbol of things southern – if both flicks had not been precisely about southern defiance in the face of northern aggression/oppression. Which, with the emphasis on race, is exactly how Bilbo and Maddox and Wallace and Thurmond meant it later, and how Mississippi (as noted, a very special case) meant it all along.
Anyhow, the issue is a red herring I won’t chase anymore. Prove the rag was as abundant and pure as mother’s milk from Appomattox up 'til 1955, and it won’t change the fact that now it’s an offensive icon full of repugnant meaning. The fact is that there was no real need for racist symbolism then: when every school, bus station, restaurant and toilet upholds the ideals of white supremacy, you can slack off a tad in the war of semiotics.
Zoe, you’re being less than lucid. Whites don’t own southern heritage, which is why their embrace of the flag exposes them as hypocrites. What I was suggesting, gently, is that forming a group – any group, but let’s say one dedicated to southern culture and heritage – is apt to attract all kinds of people, and draping a big confederate battle flag over it is an effective way to keep black people away, and I think it’s often done on purpose to achieve just that result. Grocery stores, crawdads, jazz and Titans games all share the characteristic of having nothing to do with the subject unless the damned old rag shows up, and then they’re no exception to anything I’ve said.
