Confederate flag fades 155 years after Civil War
Long a symbol of pride to some and hatred to others, the Confederate battle flag is losing its place of official prominence 155 years after rebellious Southern states lost a war to perpetuate slavery.
Mississippi’s Republican governor yesterday signed legislation to remove the Civil War emblem from the state flag, a move that was both years in the making and notable for its swiftness amid a national debate over racial inequality following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
Make no mistake: The Confederate flag isn’t anywhere close to being gone from the South. Just drive along highways where Sons of Confederate Veterans members have erected gigantic battle flags or stop by Dixie General Store, where Bob Castello makes a living selling hundreds of rebel-themed shirts, hats, car accessories and more in an east Alabama county named for a Confederate officer, General Patrick Cleburne.
“Business is very good right now,” Castello said.
The Confederacy was founded in Montgomery in 1861 with a Constitution that prohibited laws “denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves”. The South lost, slavery ended, and Confederate sympathisers almost ever since have argued the war wasn’t just about slavery, instead advocating the “lost cause” version centred around state’s rights, Southern nobility and honour.
But the flag has a dark side. It has been waved for decades by the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who oppose equal rights. That, combined with a widening sense that it is time to retire the symbol of a defeated nation, has led to change. “The argument over the flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it’s time to end it,” Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said.
Mississippi’s was the last state flag to include the design.
Not long after the Charleston shooting in 2015, House Speaker Philip Gunn became the state’s first prominent Republican to say the Confederate symbol was morally offensive and must be changed.
During the past month, Gunn and Mississippi’s first-year lieutenant governor, Republican Delbert Hosemann, persuaded a bipartisan coalition of legislators that changing the flag was inevitable and they should be part of it.
Hosemann is the great-grandson of a Confederate soldier, Lieutenant Rhett Miles, who was captured at Vicksburg and requested a pardon.
“After he had fought a war for four years, he admitted his transgressions and asked for full citizenship,” Hosemann said during the debate. “If he were here today, he’d be proud of us.”