THE CROSS THEY BEAR: WHITENESS, RELIGION, AND THE
CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Jonathan Leib
Department of Geography
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-2190
[email protected]
and
Gerald Webster
Department of Geography
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0322
[email protected]
Draft of paper prepared for the conference, “Flying the Flag: Critical Perspectives on
Symbolism and Identity,” University of Oslo, November 2005
Please do not quote or cite from this draft without permission of the authors
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I. INTRODUCTION
In the first decade of the 21st Century, race continues to be the most important
fault line on the political landscape of the American South. No issue reveals this division
more clearly than the past decade’s controversies over the meaning of those symbols
associated with the mid-19th Century Confederate States of America, the most strident of
which have pertained to the public display of the Confederate battle flag. Attitudes and
perspectives in these debates have largely divided along racial lines. Many if not most
white southerners view the battle emblem as symbolic of honor and heritage, ultimately
drawing upon their collective interpretation of the reasons for the Civil War. In dramatic
contrast, most black southerners interpret the battle flag as representative of the violence
and racism implicit in the antebellum slave system in the 19th Century, and southern
white defiance of court ordered desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement in the
latter half of the 20th Century.
Over the past decade, my co-author Gerald Webster and I have written
extensively about the debates in the American South over the control of the region’s
symbolic landscape, the most numerous and vitriolic of which have pertained to
government support for flying the Confederate battle flag. Given the Call for Papers for
this conference, we will discuss a variety of theoretical and conceptual perspectives we
have explored for understanding the passionate debates over the battle flag in the
American South. We will first discuss the history of the battle flag and the geographic
scales at which these debates have taken place. We then briefly examine the racial divide
over the flag in the region using the electoral cleavage model, followed by discussions of
such perspectives such as iconography and public memory, and landscape representation
3
to aid in the understanding of the contours of these debates (see Leib and Webster 2002).
We conclude with a discussion of our work in progress which considers issues of
whiteness and religion to help further our understanding of debates over the flag.
II. THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG
The Confederate battle flag, also known as the “Rebel Flag”, “Starry Cross,” and
“Southern Cross”, is the best known symbol of the short-lived Confederate States of
America (1861-1865). Notably, the Confederate battle flag never served as the official
flag of the Confederacy.
The battle flag is one of the four flags most directly associated with the
Confederacy. The first national flag, also known as the “Stars and Bars,” was flown from
1861 until 1863. Similar in appearance to the United States flag, the “Stars and Bars”
caused confusion in battle during the early stages of the Civil War, leading to the
adoption of the “Rebel Flag” as a field battle flag. The first national flag’s similarity to
the U.S. flag increasingly became a liability due to the growing negative southern views
of the U.S. government as the war proceeded. Hence, in 1863, the “Stars and Bars” was
replaced as the Confederacy’s national flag with the “Stainless Banner” which contained
the battle emblem in the upper left corner, with the remainder of the flag being white.
While some suggested that the white field took on religious overtones as a symbol of the
purity of the Confederate cause, others argued that the flag’s white field could be
interpreted in a directly racist manner. In any event, in the 19th Century white South,
racism and religion were largely conflated suggesting both interpretations as being
correct (Webster 1997, Bonner 2002, Sebasta and Hague 2002, Sebasta 2004, Webster
and Leib 2005). However, as is readily apparent, the “Stainless Banner” can be mistaken
4
for a flag of surrender on a windless day. As a result, shortly before the end of the war
the Confederate Congress adopted a third national flag which added a vertical red stripe
to the right edge of the white field (see Cannon 1988, Bonner 2002, Coski 2005).
While we do not have the space in this presentation for a full discussion, after the
Civil War the battle emblem became the most recognized symbol of the Confederacy,
with the three national flags fading into comparative oblivion (see Webster and Webster
1994, Webster and Leib 2005). In fact, some of those who today oppose government
support for flying the battle emblem, because they view it as a symbol of racism and
hatred, have supported the “Stars and Bars” as an acceptable substitute. We will discuss
more about the flag’s iconography below.
III. SCALE
While contemporary debates over the Confederate battle flag address issues of
regional identities including questions about who is a southerner and what that identity
means, it is important to note that these debates over the flag are being played out at a
number of different geographic scales across the region. The battle flag debate has
become politicized at the individual, local, state, regional and national scales.
State – The most prominent disputes over the Confederate battle flag have taken place at
the state level in the American South (Leib, Webster and Webster 2000, Leib and
Webster 2002). The most intense debates have pertained to the display of the battle flag
by state governments in the ‘Deep South’ States of Alabama (Webster and Leib 2002),
Georgia (Leib 1995, Leib and Webster 2004b), Mississippi (Leib and Webster 2003), and
South Carolina (Hill 2002, Prince 2004, Webster and Leib 2001). In Alabama and South
Carolina, the battle flag flew over the state capitol domes in Montgomery and Columbia,
5
respectively, while in Georgia and Mississippi the battle emblem was incorporated into
their state flags.
In Alabama, the battle flag flew on top of the state capitol building in
Montgomery beginning in 1963, when then-Governor George Wallace raised it in an act
of defiance directed at federal efforts to integrate the University of Alabama. The battle
flag was not lowered until 1987 when it, along with the Alabama state flag and U.S. flag,
were removed from the top of the capitol dome because the building was undergoing
extensive renovations. Although the battle flag’s removal was intended to be temporary,
a lawsuit filed by African American state legislators successfully prevented the battle flag
from being returned to the top of the dome upon completion of the renovations.
Additionally, in 1999 a black lawmaker successfully had the battle flag removed from the
chambers of the lower house of the Alabama legislature. Attempts by pro-flag legislators
to restore both the flag on top of the dome and in the legislative chambers have been
unsuccessful (Webster and Leib 2002).
In South Carolina the battle flag was placed on top of the state capitol building in
Columbia in 1962. Flag supporters today claim that the flag was raised as part of the
state’s centennial celebration of the Civil War, while opponents argue that the flag was
raised to signify the state’s (white) political leadership’s opposition to integration
(Webster and Leib 2001, Hill 2002, Prince 2004). In the early 1990s, black legislators
started pressing the state to remove the flag from the dome, and the flag became an
increasingly contentious issue in South Carolina politics. This was particularly the case
after questions were raised about whether the flag’s contested meanings were hampering
efforts to increase foreign investment in the state’s manufacturing sector because of fears
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that international corporations equated the flag with poor race relations and a hostile
business climate. 1 The flag debate’s vitriolic rhetoric dominated South Carolina politics
throughout the 1990s. A boycott by the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) and large scale protests against the flag finally led to a
compromise which moved the flag off the state house dome to a nearby Confederate
soldier’s memorial. This compromise neither fully pleased pro-flag or anti-flag forces.
In Georgia, the battle emblem was incorporated into the state flag in 1956.
Dominating the right two-thirds of the flag, the evidence suggests the emblem was added
as an act of defiance against the federal government’s efforts to end segregation (Leib
1995, Davis 1998). In 1993, then Georgia Governor Zell Miller led the first major
though ultimately unsuccessful attempt to remove the battle emblem from the state flag.
In 2001, Governor Roy Barnes, backed by black state legislators and Georgia’s business
community, successfully passed a bill through the legislature sanctioning a new flag
which greatly minimized the battle emblem and placed it in a historical context. In 2002,
Barnes lost reelection in a major upset, thanks in large part to increased turnout among
rural whites from southern Georgia who were angry with his efforts to minimize the
battle emblem on the state flag. The 2003 legislature was dominated by an attempt to
restore the battle emblem to the flag. In the end however, a new flag was developed that
was favored by those opposed to the Confederate battle flag despite the fact that it closely
resembled the ‘Stars and Bars’, the first national flag of the Confederacy. This new flag
1
Similar concerns that the Confederate battle emblem hampered economic development were also raised
in the battle flag debates in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi (Leib and Webster 2002). As the head of the
Mississippi ‘Chamber of Commerce’ put it in 2001 about the effort to remove the battle emblem from that
state’s flag, the “issue isn’t about black or white . . . It’s about green [the color of U.S. paper currency],
about bringing jobs to Mississippi” (quoted in Blackmon 2001).
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was ratified overwhelmingly in a public referendum in 2004, with overwhelming support
from both white and black Georgians (Leib and Webster 2004b, 2006).
In Mississippi, the battle emblem was added to the state flag in 1894. In 2000, the
Mississippi State Supreme Court issued a ruling in a 1994 lawsuit aimed at eliminating
the battle emblem from the flag. Rather than ruling directly on the battle emblem, the
Court found instead that the state did not have an official state flag because the flag as
adopted by the state legislature in 1894 was not included in a 1906 revision of the state’s
constitution (Mississippi Division of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans v.
Mississippi State Conference of NAACP Branches, 2000). Without a state flag, the
Mississippi legislature approved a public referendum for 2001 to allow Mississippi voters
to choose between the 1894 battle-emblem state flag or a newly designed flag that
replaced the emblem with a circle of twenty stars, representing Mississippi’s entrance as
the twentieth state of the U.S. With the international and national media closely
following the campaign, Mississippi voters voted to retain the battle emblem flag by a
two-to-one margin (Leib and Webster 2002, 2003).
Individual – Controversies over whether the flag is a symbol of heritage and pride or
hatred and racism have occurred at other geographical scales, including at the scale of the
individual in a variety of contexts. First, fearing inflaming racial tension, a number of
school districts throughout the region have banned students from wearing clothing
featuring the battle emblem (there are several Southern clothing manufacturers that make
T-shirts including various renditions of the flag in their design) (e.g., Ford 2003, Beirich
and Moser 2003). Some of these bans have been challenged in the court system. Private
businesses have also been affected. Probably the best known is the case of South
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Carolina’s Maurice Bessinger, owner of the state’s largest barbecue restaurant chain,
noted Confederate battle flag defender, and in the 1960s one of the state’s leading
segregationists. In 2000, following the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the
top of the South Carolina state house, Bessinger removed the U.S. flags flying outside his
restaurants and replaced them with the battle flag and the South Carolina state flag.
Bessinger refused calls to lower the battle flag. His refusal, combined with the discovery
that he was distributing racist literature at his restaurants, led to what is now a five year
boycott of his barbecue chain and products (Leib and Webster 2005).
Local – Various localities have also been sites in the battle over the flag. For
example, protests took place in 2001 in Lake City, Florida because its municipal seal
incorporates the battle flag (Andio 2001). Similarly a long standing fight along the
Mississippi Gulf Coast was settled in 2002 when the electorate of Harrison County voted
to keep the battle flag flying as one of an eight flag display on the beach along the
Biloxi/Gulfport Mississippi border (the battle flag representing one of the eight flags that
have flown over Mississippi during its history). Of course, the ultimate ‘winner’ in the
battle over the Eight Flags display was Mother Nature, as the storm surge from Hurricane
Katrina washed the display from the beach in August (or as reported by the Biloxi SunHerald newspaper, as a result of the storm the “concrete Eight Flags display marking the
Gulfport-Biloxi boundary – a signature of both coastal communities – was gone” [Lee,
Hammack and Dodd 2005]).
Regional – At the regional level of the South, a variety of groups have been actively
involved in the flag debate. Most prominent have been ‘Neo-Confederate’ groups who
view the region as the exclusive domain of native Southern white Christians (African
9
Americans are largely if not entirely excluded from their definition of the region), and
who seek secession if necessary to create their vision of a white Christian South. We
discuss the Neo-Confederate movement in more detail below. However these groups
including the League of the South, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and, more
recently, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, have been actively defending and flying the
Confederate battle flag over the past two decades (Potok 2000, Sebasta and Hague 2002,
Webster 2004, Webster and Leib 2005). These groups have been prominent in local and
statewide controversies about the flag, have worked to defeat legislators they view as
anti-battle flag, and have lobbied heavily for legislation promoting, protecting and
defining the flag’s meaning (for example, the SCV has filed lawsuits against state motor
vehicle agencies to force them to issue specialty car license plates that feature the battle
emblem).
National – While the debate over the Confederate flag is normally seen as a regional
issue, it has taken on national importance as well. In 2000 and 2004, the flag became an
issue in the U.S. presidential elections (especially in the 2000 Republican primaries and
the 2004 Democratic primaries). As well, the U.S. Senate was brought into the debate
over Confederate flags in 1993, when the then only African American member of the
Senate, Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, led the fight to stop the Senate from renewing
the patent for the insignia of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which features the
first national flag of the Confederacy (Webster and Webster 1994). The passionate
debate over the issue foreshadowed more recent controversies in the region over the past
decade on the flag.
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IV. THEORETICAL AND CONCEPTUAL PERSPECTIVES
Over the past decade we have examined these debates over the Confederate battle
flag from a number of theoretical and conceptual perspectives, including the electoral
cleavage model, iconography and public memory, landscape representation, ethnic
nationalism, critical race theory and whiteness, economic development, and political
culture and religion. Let us briefly touch on a few of these topics here including the
electoral cleavage model, iconography and public memory, and landscape representation
(for a fuller discussion of these perspectives, see Leib and Webster 2002), before
discussing whiteness, religion and the flag in more depth.
A. Cleavage Model
The Confederate battle flag is deeply revered or deeply despised by many, if not
most, Southern U.S. citizens. One way of examining the underlying division in the
region on this issue is through the cleavage model of electoral politics. This model, first
developed in the late 1960s, suggests that there are stable divisions in the politics of
Western democracies (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Shelley, Johnston and Taylor 1990;
O’Reilly and Webster 1998). Of these stable divisions, we have concluded that the
core/periphery cleavage best captures the sharp racial division exhibited in flag debates
including public opinion polling, and legislative and popular votes on the flag. While
within society the dominant culture constitutes the ‘core’ cleavage, “ethnically,
linguistically, or religiously distinct subject populations” may make up the “periphery
cleavage” (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, 14). As we have argued elsewhere (Leib and
Webster 2002, 224), given the history of the American South, this interpretation,
is most appropriate given the importance of race to the region’s history.
From this perspective, Southern whites constitute the core societal
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cleavage due to their numeric advantage as well as their historic control
over the region’s political and economic systems. In contrast, Southern
African-Americans constitute the societal periphery, at least from the
vantage point of many Southern whites.
While the rigidity of this societal division has been altered in recent decades, its
historical impress has not been de-centered and clearly remains central to the Deep
South’s socio-political structures. This division is also apparent in public opinion
polling, and legislative and popular votes on the Confederate battle flag. Most public
opinion polls in the region have shown a sharp racial division, with most African
Americans interpreting the flag as a racist symbol and wanting governments to stop
flying it, while many whites do not understand it as a racist symbol and do not want the
flag taken down (Leib 1998, Leib and Webster 2002). Our statistical analysis of
individual state legislative votes on the flag in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina,
and within the region as a whole also demonstrate that race was an overriding factor in
determining the outcome of these votes (Webster and Leib 2001, 2002; Leib and Webster
2004b, 2006).
Mississippi is the sole state to have conducted a direct statewide public referendum
on the battle flag. Race was also the overriding factor in that 2001 vote on whether to
retain or replace the battle emblem state flag. To address this relationship, we briefly
examine the voting results in Clarke County, Mississippi, located on the state’s eastern
border with Alabama. Clarke County’s racial makeup (34.8% African American) and
vote to replace the battle emblem in the state flag (35.1%) mirrored that of the state as a
whole (32.3% and 35.6% respectively). To show this racial polarization, consider the
votes in two of Clarke County’s 26 electoral precincts: Hale and Snell. In the Hale
precinct, which is approximately 83% African American, the raw vote totals were 89 to
12
replace the battle emblem state flag and 14 to retain it. In the Snell precinct, which is
98% white, the vote was 132 to keep the battle emblem flag, to only 4 wishing to replace
it. As these results suggest (as well as a more detailed statistical analysis that we have
performed), racial bloc voting played a key role in the Mississippi referendum’s results
(Leib and Webster 2003).
B. Iconography and public memory
Given this division, we want to introduce various perspectives which aid in
understanding the political dynamics of these debates over the flag. First, the arguments
over the Confederate battle flag demonstrate the power of the concepts of iconography
and public memory.
As first introduced to geography by French scholar Jean Gottman (1952),
iconography refers to a set of common symbols that are used to bind a group of people
together within a territory. While icons can act as centripetal forces to unify a country’s
population by providing national values in which all can believe, icons such as the battle
flag can also serve as centrifugal forces, dividing a state’s population along major cultural
and racial cleavages.
Icons and their meanings are socially constructed and those meanings can be
deconstructed “within a larger complex of cultural, social and political values” (Boime
1998, 2). Differences between competing meanings are never fully resolved and are
subject to potentially continuous debate and redefinition. As John Bodnar (1992, 1994)
suggests through the concept of public memory, how the past and its symbols are
interpreted, commemorated, and represented has as much to do with shaping how society
13
understands its present and future, as it does about the past. He also notes that how the
past is interpreted is intensely political, constantly evolving and subject to contestation
(see Johnson 2005). Hence, the power to shape the meaning of these icons includes the
power to shape society and societal relations, thus suggesting the importance, in John
Western’s (1997, 8) words, of “the power of definition.”
Civil War historian Brooks Simpson argues that the Neo-Confederate
movement’s current attempt to create a revisionist history of the Civil War is an effort to
recast the region’s public memory. He suggests that,
This is an active attempt to reshape historical memory, an effort by white
Southerners to find historical justification for present-day actions. The
neo-Confederate movement’s ideologues have grasped that if they control
how people remember the past, they’ll control how people approach the
present and the future (quoted in Potok 2000, 36).
Meanings of the flag
The Confederate battle flag is controversial in the American South largely
because of the multiple meanings ascribed to this icon (e.g., Webster and Webster 1994,
Leib 1995, 1998, Leib and Webster 2002, 2004a, Leib, Webster and Webster 2000,
Webster and Leib 2001, 2002). In this section, we discuss two of the flag’s contested
meanings: as heritage and as hate.
Heritage
The flag is seen by many if not most traditional white Southerners as a proud
symbol of their heritage and their ancestors’ attempts to defend themselves against the
invasion of federal military forces during the Civil War. Flag supporters argue that the
flag is not a racist symbol, nor does it symbolize the oppression of African Americans.
14
In the 1950s, as the Civil War centennial was approaching, the battle emblem was
incorporated into the Georgia state flag. According to a state brochure the purpose for its
addition was "to create a living memorial to the Confederacy ... Embracing the beloved
Battle Flag of the Confederacy within our own State emblem portrays in part the
unbounded love, admiration, and respect that we of today have for them of yesterday"
(Fortson 1957, 12). As a result, Georgia flag proponents emphatically argue the state flag
was changed to honor their ancestors and their bravery, and not to demonstrate the state’s
defiance against the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Similarly, South Carolina
political leaders from 1962 argue the flag was raised over their state capitol that year
solely to celebrate the Civil War centennial. An attempted compromise in 1997 to
remove the flag from the top of the South Carolina capitol dome included language in the
legislative bill that would have legally codified the official state meaning of the flag by
declaring it “a nonpolitical symbol of heritage” (Webster and Leib 2001). In 1999, after
the battle flag was removed from the chamber of the Alabama House of Representatives,
a resolution was introduced by a legislator who was an ardent flag defender. He
proclaimed that, despite the fact that the first national flag of the Confederacy had flown
over Montgomery while the city served as the first capital of the Confederacy in 1861,
the battle flag was the “only Confederate flag recognized by the state of Alabama.” The
resolution also stated that “the Confederate Battle Flag is an important symbol of the
Heritage of the South and of the State of Alabama, no less a source of great pride in our
American Heritage than the United States Flag” (quoted in Webster and Leib 2002, 9). It
should be kept in mind that there were obvious racial overtones to the flag’s raising over
the state capitol dome in 1963, a fact not dealt with in the legislator’s resolution.
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Today, a variety of Neo-Confederate groups such as the Sons of Confederate
Veterans and the League of the South passionately uphold the flag as a proud symbol of
their white southern heritage. These organizations have received varying degrees of
publicity and support in the region and have been able to reach a worldwide audience in
through their use of the internet, such as the League of the South’s site, DixieNet.org
(Warf and Grimes 1997, Webster 2004).
Hate
Some Confederate heritage groups including the League of the South have been
denounced for their racist and white supremacist views, including in a 2000 expose’ by
the Southern Poverty Law Center (Potok 2000). As a result, a second meaning ascribed
to the flag is that of white defiance and racism.
The battle flag was used by white Southerners in the 1950s and 1960s as a symbol
of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement’s demands that the basic rights of U.S.
citizenship be extended to the region's African American population. It was also used by
white southerners to signal their defiance of the federal government’s efforts to enforce
these rights. Use of the flag for these purposes increased dramatically after the U.S.
Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which declared
segregated public schools unconstitutional. In Alabama, for example, in 1956 the flag
was a rallying symbol for those whites at the University of Alabama protesting the first
attempt to enroll black students at that school (Clark 1993). The flag was raised in 1963
by Alabama Governor George Wallace over the state capitol to protest the federal
government's efforts that eventually desegregated the University. The flag was also used
by Wallace during his 1963 gubernatorial inauguration, during which he stated his now
16
infamous declaration of “Segregation now . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation
forever” (Carter 1995). Writing in 1965 about white Mississippians’ use of the flag in
their struggle to stop the civil rights advances sought by the state’s African American
citizens, famed Southern writer Walker Percy (1997, 214) noted that, “the Confederate
flag, once the battle emblem of brave men, . . . has come to stand for raw racism and
hoodlum defiance of the law” (see also Cohodas 1997, Eubanks 2003, Walton 1996).
Flag opponents argue that the battle emblem was incorporated into the Georgia
state flag and raised over the South Carolina and Alabama capitols by white politicians
signaling their defiance of the federal government's interventionist efforts to protect the
rights of each state's African American citizenry. As a result, the flag is viewed by most
southern blacks as being centrally racist. It is notable that these readings of the flag are
salient for both the 1860s and the 1960s, with one person’s hatred being another person’s
defiance. Even if the flag was raised exclusively to honor the memory of those lost in the
Civil War, flag opponents argue that its display should not be provided public sanction
because it also symbolically reflects the region’s effort to maintain slavery in the 1860s
and efforts to deny African Americans their basic rights as citizens in the 1960s. As
signs carried by African American marchers in a January 2000 anti-flag rally at the State
House in Columbia, South Carolina read, “Your heritage is my slavery” (quoted in Leib
and Webster 2002, 229).
The level of intensity that both supporters and opponents feel towards the battle
emblem is demonstrated in the public statements of southern politicians. For example,
Glenn McConnell, a white leader in the South Carolina State Senate and one of the state’s
most powerful politicians, argued in 1996 that to remove the flag from the top of the
17
capitol dome would be an act of “cultural genocide” against southern whites.
McConnell, an owner of a Civil War memorabilia store, went so far as to argue that such
an act would be analogous to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the
1930s. Flag opponents have also employed Nazi imagery in their arguments, equating
the flag with a Nazi swastika. As Georgia State Senator Billy McKinney put it in a 1997
flap between New York and Georgia over flying each other’s state flags, “if you really
want to get some dander up, put the Nazi flag up. They both [the Nazi flag and Georgia
state flag] stand for the same thing” (quoted in Leib 1998, 234-5).
Alternative readings
Even while debates continue over whether the flag is a symbol for preserving
heritage or sanctioning hatred, this icon is being reinterpreted through popular culture.
Two African American entrepreneurs in South Carolina started their own apparel
business with clothing featuring the battle flag drawn in the red, green and black colors of
the black liberation flag. This “new rebel flag” has sprouted up on clothing and
decorative front car license plates, with sales being brisk to both blacks and whites. They
see this new rebel flag as a unifying force, targeting sales, in their words, “to the sons and
daughters of former slaves and former slave owners” (quoted in Leib and Webster 2002,
229).
At the same time, not all four flags most associated with the Confederacy are
viewed in the same light. Given the high visibility of the battle emblem and the way in
which it has been used during the past 150 years, both meanings of heritage and hate are
far more associated with it as compared to the other three principal flags of the
Confederacy. Thus, one compromise solution that has been proposed is for governments
18
to replace the battle flag with the first national flag of the Confederacy, or “Stars and
Bars.” In 1999, for example, the proposal to remove the battle emblem from the
Alabama State House chambers called for it to be replaced with the “Stars and Bars.”
Despite the fact that this was replacing one Confederate flag with another, the measure
was supported by all African American members of the State House, and rejected by a
majority of the body’s white members (Webster and Leib 2002, Leib and Webster 2006).
The new Georgia state flag that resembled the “Stars and Bars” introduced in 2003 was
supported by black state lawmakers as well as black Georgia voters in a 2004
referendum. Both black lawmakers and voters supported the new state flag as a
preferable alternative to the 1956 state flag which incorporated the battle emblem (Leib
and Webster 2004, 2006).
C. Landscape Representation
Along with studying the meaning of iconographic symbols, cultural geographers
have argued that the landscapes in which these symbols are situated are themselves
imbedded with meaning (e.g., Meinig 1979, Foote 1997, Till 2004). In this broader area
of landscape representation, landscapes can be studied to discern the political, economic
and social ideologies that went into their creation and interpretation (e.g., Cosgrove and
Daniels 1988, Duncan 1990, Johnson 1995). As Richard Schein (1997, 660) writes, the
cultural landscape is “a tangible visible entity, one that is both reflective and constitutive
of society, culture, and territory” (see Lewis 1979, Schein 2003).
One of the central elements in the creation of these landscapes is power. As
stated by Don Mitchell (1996, 27),
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“landscape” is a relation of power, an ideological rendering of spatial
relations. Landscapes transform the facts of place into a controlled
representation, an imposition of order in which one (or perhaps a few)
dominant ways of seeing are substituted for all ways of seeing and
experiencing.
Thus, we can not only learn about society through the study of symbols themselves, but
also by examining when, where, how and by whom such symbols are placed on the
landscape. This latter focus can provide clues to dominant ideologies and the nature of
power relationships in society (see Mitchell 2000).
The past four decades have witnessed tremendous economic, political and social
change in the American South, leading to debates over the region’s identity. Part of this
debate has involved how the South’s history and culture should be represented on the
landscape. In this debate, both traditional white southerners and African American
southerners have vied to define the region’s public memory by controlling the right to
determine whose history and symbols are represented within the region’s public spaces.
For most of the 20th Century, Civil War memorials established by the region’s
whites dominated the South’s symbolic landscape. However, in the late 20th Century,
mainly African Americans attempted to celebrate the Civil Rights Movement’s struggle
on the region’s landscape through the creation of museums, monuments, and in street
naming (e.g., Dwyer 2002, Alderman 2003, Leib 2002, 2004). Some of these attempts
have led to disputes, because by commemorating the struggle for civil rights, African
Americans are challenging the white domination inferred from the commemoration of the
Civil War on the landscape. The most heated disputes have occurred over direct
challenges to white domination with calls for Civil War symbols, such as the Confederate
20
battle flag, to be removed from the landscape because they are icons of shame rather than
icons of pride.
The power of symbolic landscapes is seen in the debate over where the battle flag
should fly on the statehouse grounds in South Carolina in Alabama. In both states, the
flag flew above the capitol dome until it was moved to another position on the capitol
grounds. In Alabama the flag was moved to a Confederate memorial only a few feet
from the side of the building, while in South Carolina it was moved to a Confederate
monument in front of the capitol. Despite the fact that the flag still flies at the seats of
power in both states, the move from one part of the capitol landscape to another provoked
heated debate (Leib and Webster 2004a).
As we have documented elsewhere (Leib and Webster 2002, Leib and Webster
2004a), one of the most interesting parts of the various proposals to move the flag from
the top of the South Carolina state house lies in the microgeographies of the state
capitol’s symbolic landscape. Opponents of the flag wanted it removed from the top of
the capitol because of their belief that by flying over the seat of government, the state was
sanctioning the negative connotations they ascribe to the flag. In the 1997 legislative
debate over the flag, opponents proposed that the flag should fly at the Confederate
soldier’s monument in front of the capitol where it would be put in an appropriate
historical context, and not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the state government.
However, the monument is at ground level at a major street intersection in downtown
Columbia. At this location the flag is more visible and would be more easily seen than it
would by flying high atop the capitol building. In spite of this reality, flag defenders
argued that it should remain above the capitol where it is more difficult to see than flying
21
at ground level. Thus, the meanings and power of icons can change depending where
they are placed upon the landscape.
In January 2000, South Carolina Governor Hodges called for the flag to come
down off the capitol dome and for an agreement to be reached for its subsequent
placement. Polls indicated that a solid majority of South Carolinians agreed that it was
time for the flag to come down, but also underscored their disagreement on where it
should be placed. Should it fly at the Confederate memorial in front of the state capitol
where it would be visible to all? With public support growing for the flag’s removal,
some flag defenders finally agreed with this solution. But by 2000 many opponents
wanted the flag to be moved off the state house grounds entirely, and locked away under
glass in a museum.
Hodges proposed a compromise solution: take the flag down and fly it next to the
statue of South Carolina Civil War General and 19th Century political leader Wade
Hampton, which also sits on the state house grounds. In this manner, the flag could fly
with a Civil War statue on the state house grounds. But because the Hampton statue is
located behind the capitol, the flag would be far less visible than was the case if it flew in
front of the building at the Confederate soldier’s memorial. Hodges’ solution was
criticized by many including several members of the state legislature. Flag supporters
argued that by flying it with the Hampton statue, the flag would not clearly visible and
thus constitute an affront to their heritage. Flag opponents, on the other hand, argued that
by flying with Hampton it was still on the state house grounds, and therefore
disrespectful to their strong belief that the flag is a symbol of racism and hatred.
22
In the end, the flag was moved to a position behind the Confederate monument in
front of the state capitol. The negotiations over the final provisions of the bill by the
House-Senate conference committee included such mundane but highly charged details
as how tall the flag pole would be and whether lights would illuminate the flag at night.
In December 2001, the state legislature was locked in a seven week deadlock over the
question of what fabric should be used for the flag’s design. Given its position behind
the Confederate monument, it is difficult to see on days with little wind. Hence, flag
supporters demanded a lighter weight nylon flag to replace the heavier cotton flag so the
flag would flap more readily. Opponents refused, and at one point a leading flag
opponent compared flag proponents unfavorably to the Taliban because of their call for a
nylon flag. In the end, they compromised on a cotton-silk blend (Leib and Webster
2004a).
The flag has also been used as a symbol of opposition to the commemoration on
the landscape of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, in January 1997, a monument
to Viola Liuzzo along the 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Alabama route of the Voting
Rights March route was vandalized when a rebel flag was spray painted on it. Liuzzo
was killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan during the march. A fence now surrounds
the site to prevent vandals from regularly defacing the monument (see Stanton 1998).
In Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War, a
groundbreaking ceremony was held in 1995 for the erection of a statue of the late African
American native son, tennis legend, and human rights activist, Arthur Ashe. After a
contentious debate, the statue was erected on the city’s famed Monument Avenue, home
to five impressive statues of Confederate notables, and which is considered to be one of
23
the South’s grandest Confederate memorial sites. White protesters demonstrated their
opposition to the placement of the statue by holding up Confederate battle flags during
the ceremony (Leib 2002). In 1999, another dispute arose in the city over whether a large
mural of Confederate General Robert E. Lee should be hung as part of a display of
Richmond’s history along its $50 million Canal Walk redevelopment project. Initially
the controversy led the mural of Lee to be removed. In reaction, Lee proponents tried to
disrupt the long-awaited opening ceremony of the project by unfurling a giant
Confederate battle flag from a bridge over the canal as a boat of state and city dignitaries
passed underneath (Leib 2004).
V. “WHAT WOULD ROBERT E. LEE DO?”: WHITENESS, RELIGION
AND THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG DEBATE
Critical race theory and whiteness studies are useful to understand the intransigence
of traditional white southerners over issues pertinent to their understanding of the
region’s racialized past, and why many whites see no basis for the conflict over the
Confederate battle flag (Webster and Leib 2001, Leib and Webster 2002). From the
vantage point of traditional white southerners, they are the norm, the progenitors and
keepers of (white) southern culture. African American southerners are viewed as the
"other," even though they may trace a longer lineage in the region. Thus, African
American southerners are viewed by traditional white southerners as outsiders who
cannot comprehend the importance of tradition and southern heritage.
How is it possible for different groups of southerners to view “southern” symbols
in such polarized ways? We might posit that black and white southerners have strongly
24
contrasting levels of emotional attachment to the region, but this difference is not
supported by polls which have shown that over 90% of both blacks and whites in the
region are proud of their southern heritage (Associated Press 1994). The attachment by
many African Americans to the South is also underscored by the large numbers of
African Americans moving to the region. In a reversal of the ‘Great Migration’, many
African Americans are returning to the region that their families left in the mid-20th
Century in search of greater social freedom and economic opportunities in the northern
and midwestern U.S. (Shelley and Webster 1998, Frey 2004).
The differences in the perceptions of “southern” symbols between black and
white southerners is more likely found in their contrasting interpretations of the region’s
history and what and who they define as “southern.” Though both southern in terms of
simple geographic association, black and white southerners arguably constitute two
separate “nations” occupying the same geographic space. This division is not new,
having developed over three centuries of the region’s racially defined social, economic
and political systems (Webster and Leib 2001).
Despite what outsiders might presume about African American views of the
region (Cobb 1999), many African Americans see themselves as southerners and have
positive associations with the label. As greater numbers of African Americans return to
the South, some have suggested that the region adopt symbols to which both blacks and
whites can relate (e.g., Smith 1985, Wilson 1995). The Confederate battle flag, however,
is clearly not one of these. As Edward Ayers (1996, 79) argues, the “Confederate flag is
a topic of such and debate and divisiveness in the South today because it denies all that
black and white Southerners share, because it reduces the South to a one-time and one-
25
sided political identity.” In short, while we might identify qualities that collectively
define southerners, both black and white, the Confederate battle flag defines
“southernness” exclusively as “white Confederate southernness.” This differs from black
southern regional identity, for as Wilson (2005b, 24) argues, African Americans “who
claim a southern identity affirm an idealized, biracial South that witnesses for human
equality and against injustice.” In contradiction to this view, Lee Collins, the head of the
Georgia Committee to Save the State Flag in 1993 argued that the battle flag,
“symbolizes everything that Southerners fight for, Southern heritage, Southern pride,
Southern dignity and self-government. This is a true symbol of the Confederacy. . . . [It]
does not represent any form of bigotry” (quoted in Leib 1995, 44). While Collins is
purporting to speak for all southerners, clearly he is championing the traditional white
southern viewpoint which has dominated southern discourse and politics throughout the
region’s history.
Collins’ statement also provides an example of the concept of “whiteness” which
is helpful to understand the dissonance of the Confederate flag debate. The concept of
whiteness suggests that white people constitute an operational cultural group, though
most whites fail to recognize themselves as such. At present most white people view
themselves as unraced in a racialized world, the “norm”, the societal standard by which
others are evaluated (and are generally found inferior) (e.g., Frankenberg 1997, Wray and
Newitz 1997, Bonnett 2000, Hoelscher 2003, Rothenberg 2005). The centered character
of white culture and attitudes in the United States presents obstacles for people of color to
fully participate in the definition of American culture.
26
The Confederate battle flag debate reflects the centered character of white culture
in the South. White culture’s historic control in the region led to the construction of a
dominant white southern culture as well as a parallel southern black culture, with little
meshing of both white and black perspectives to form a multi-racial regional culture.
Many pro-flag white southerners assume that white southern culture is the “regional
culture,” and cannot comprehend (and do attempt to try to comprehend) why black
southerners do not feel the same emotional attachment to “southern” symbols as they do
(Webster and Leib 2001, Leib and Webster 2002).
This point is highlighted in the following exchange between African American
Georgia State Senator Charles Walker and the aforementioned Lee Collins during a 1993
panel discussion moderated by then-Governor Zell Miller on whether to remove the battle
emblem from the state flag,
CHARLES WALKER: As a black senator who’s very proud of the state of
Georgia, can you tell me why I should salute and honor the . . . flag of
Georgia?
LEE COLLINS: I don’t expect everybody —
WALKER: I represent 30 percent of this state’s population. Why should I
—
COLLINS: I don’t expect everybody to have the same connection to
Southern heritage as Southerners do.
(Crowd Noise)
ZELL MILLER: Let’s have some order
COLLINS: I understand that you have a reason, perhaps, for feeling
offended by the flag, and the black population of the state of Georgia may
have their reasons for feeling offended by the Confederate battle flag.
I contend there are more important issues to be worrying about. For
example, I was contacted by several black legislators who told me they
27
supported keeping the current flag, but not for the same reasons that
Southerners do. Southerners want to salute the flag and honor the flag
because of their heritage.
REPORTER: Are you suggesting that black Georgians are not
Southerners?
COLLINS: No, not at all. I don’t know what his origin is —
WALKER: I am an African American born in Georgia. I am the greatgrandson of former slaves. Should I not have a flag that you and I can
share in the Southern heritage. . .
(Applause)
COLLINS: If I honestly thought it was possible to find a flag that
everybody in the state of Georgia would be proud of, you might have a
valid point. (Associated Press 1993).
In keeping with whiteness theory, many southern whites see the battle flag as an
inclusive southern symbol rather than an exclusive symbol of white southerness. While
theories of whiteness suggest that whites do not see themselves as raced but rather see
themselves as the superior un-raced center of a racialized world, there are whites who
both see and obsess over their whiteness. As Colin Flint (2004, 2) notes, the “’whiteness’
that is usually invisible in mainstream (white) thought and practice is very much to the
forefront of the extreme right.” For Neo-Confederate groups such as the League of the
South, there is an obsession with the South as a white Christian nation, and they support
secession from the United States to create (or, in their mind, preserve) the purity of their
“nation.” Thus, the League of the South website (2005) states that “the League of the
South proudly displays the Confederate flags of our ancestors solely to symbolize our
desire to re-establish the Southern nation as a free and independent Confederacy of
sovereign states and to protect and defend the traditional culture of the South.”
Rejecting the claim that the flag is a symbol of racism and hatred, the League’s website
28
also makes clear who belongs to the southern nation in stating that “We of the League of
the South steadfastly reject the crass bigotry that drives this ceaseless campaign of
cultural genocide against the revered Anglo-Celtic symbols of the South.” The League of
the South has constructed and mythologized its vision of the South as a white Christian
nation directly descended from out-migrants from the Celtic area of the British Isles and
especially Scotland. This connection to Scotland is highlighted by the Neo-Confederate
movement’s reference to the battle flag as the St. Andrew’s Cross, given its resemblance
to the flag of Scotland. African American southerners are excluded, by definition, from
this conception of the region (Webster 2004; Hague, Giordano and Sebasta 2005). Given
the white purity (or racism) that one can read into the second and third national flags of
the Confederacy, it is not surprising that the League of the South has now adopted the
third national flag as their own.
Religion has also become intertwined in the debate over the Confederate battle
flag. Religion has long played a central if not dominant role in shaping the political life
and political culture of the American South (Elazar 1994, Webster 1997), in which highintensity evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant denominations, such as the Baptists,
came to dominate early in the region’s settlement history (Webster 2000). As Charles
Reagan Wilson (2005b, 9) suggests, “evangelical Protestants have been deeply tied to
dominant southern cultural styles and traditions, at the very center of a regional context
that defined parameters for private selves and public identities.” The impact of religion
has becomes so great, that Webster and Leib (2002, 18) have argued that the “religion’s
fundamentalist theology and traditionalistic political culture are so intertwined that
separating their respective influences on daily life is difficult if not impossible.” Thus,
29
while the primary impact of the South’s traditionalist political culture is the maintenance
of the region’s hierarchies, fundamentalist theology oftentimes views threats to this status
quo “as creeping ‘liberalism’ which taints that which is ‘normal’, traditional and thus
‘Godly’” (Webster 1997, 153). The consequence is that many traditional white
southerners view their cultural ‘southern’ identity in religious rather than secular terms.
As Wilson (2005b, 23) suggests, “Southern identity today resides most clearly among
white conservative and African Americans, with religion at the core of that identity.”
James Cobb (1999, 147) quotes one white southerner as arguing that “being a southerner
is definitely a spiritual condition, like being a Catholic or a Jew.” Similarly, Wilson
(2005b, 23-4) quotes one southerner who suggests that being a Southerner is a “way of
life,” with religion remaining “central to that way of life.”
In the 19th Century evangelical religious outlooks became highly intertwined with
explanations of the South’s role in the Civil War. The two largest denominations in the
South, the Baptists and Methodists, split from their northern wings prior to the Civil War
over the issue of slavery (Webster 2000). To many white southerners, secession and the
Civil War had religious foundations because they viewed the North as being the antibiblical enemy (Sebasta and Hague 2002). As Wilson (1995, 19) notes, “Ministers and
churches . . . insisted that the Confederacy was a crusade against the evil empire of the
Yankee. It was a holy war . . . .” Because this belief was difficult to perpetuate after the
military defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, “Southerners came to believe that God had
not abandoned them but instead chastised them, in preparation for a greater destiny in the
future” (Wilson 1995, 20). With this rationalization, the mythology of the “Lost Cause”
of the Confederacy became a “functioning religion” in the white South after the Civil
30
War (Wilson 1980, 1995, 2005b; Manis 2005). This “civil religion” developed its own
holy trinity of saints: Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and
Confederate President Jefferson Davis (of the three, Lee was clearly most revered, with
James McPherson (1996, 151) referring to Lee as the “white South’s favorite icon”, and
Thomas Connelly (1977, 3) noting that after the Civil War, Lee became a God figure for
[his native] Virginia, [and] a saint for the white Protestant South”). Icons to this Lost
Cause “holy trinity” were placed on the southern landscape in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, ranging from the memorial statuary on Richmond’s Monument Avenue to the
giant Confederate carving on Georgia’s Stone Mountain (Leib 2002, Essex 2002).
Wilson (1995, 21) suggests that in this Lost Cause civil religion, “southerners were told
that they were different and that difference had religious significance. . . [They] saw
religious significance in the Confederate nationalist experience in particular and in
regional culture in general.” And as Manis (2005, 166) notes, the “Confederate battle
flag, of course, constituted the southern civil religion’s most sacred object.”
This intertwining of Confederate myth and symbols with religion may help
explain why traditional white Southerners are so passionate in their defense of the battle
flag as a symbol of their cultural ‘way of life’. Not surprisingly, it has been NeoConfederate groups who have been most forceful in mixing religion with the flag debate.
This stems from their view that the Civil War was not so much a war over slavery or
states’ rights, but rather that it was a theological war, a war to defend a ‘pure’ Christianity
(Sebasta and Hague 2002). For League of the South founder Michael Hill, the South
entered the Civil War because “it chose to fight Northern [biblical] apostasy rather than
submit to an unbiblical world,” and that the “distinguishing characteristic of our
31
Confederate ancestors was, without doubt, their Christian faith” (quoted in Webster 2004,
150). As the primary symbol of the Lost Cause (civil) religion, defending the battle flag
literally becomes a religious crusade. As Michael Hill (n.d.) has put it, the Confederate
battle flag stands first and foremost for “Christian liberty.” This defense becomes even
more critical for many in the Neo-Confederate movement who contend that the
“traditional South [is] the last bastion of Christendom in America” (Carlson n.d.). As a
result, “the ever increasing attacks on Southern symbols, history, and culture, along with
the concerted attacks on what is left of traditional Christian faith, would seem to indicate
that there might be a link between the two, and indeed there is” (Carlson n.d.). Railing
against those who wish to remove the battle flag from the region’s landscape, NeoConfederate cause celebre and restaurateur, Maurice Bessinger (2001, xxi), goes so far as
to claim that the battle flag is the “cross of God.” Given the flag’s religious significance,
Bessinger goes on to argue that “God can not be happy about this!” Thus, it is no
accident that the cover of Bessinger’s 2001 autobiography, Defending My Heritage,
includes pictures of both the battle flag and the Bible.
Two additional examples of the intertwining of Neo-Confederate views on
religion and the flag are provided by John Weaver and John Thomas Cripps, both
Christian clergymen associated with the movement. John Weaver, a graduate of
Greenville, South Carolina’s ultra-conservative Bob Jones University, served as Chaplin
to the Sons of Confederate Veterans from 2000 through 2004. He is the author of the
pamphlet, “The Truth About the Confederate Flag,” which provides a biblical defense of
the flag and argues that it is symbolic of Christian government. It should also be noted
that Weaver is the author of the apologist pamphlet entitled “A Biblical View of
32
Slavery.” The pamphlet was being sold in Maurice Bessinger’s restaurants, and was a
principal factor leading to the boycott of his chain (Leib and Webster 2005).
In the early 2000s, Pastor John Thomas Cripps was president of the Mississippi
chapter of the League of the South. He was also a leading battle flag defender and a key
figure in the Mississippi state flag debate of 2001. In 2000, Cripps announced his
candidacy for the governorship of Mississippi in 2003, running for the nomination of the
Southern Party (the then political party of the League of the South). The press release
announcing his candidacy began by stating that “the campaign of ethnic cleansing against
Mississippi and the entire South has increased at a disturbing and rapid pace since the
inauguration of Governor Ronnie Musgrove” in January 2000 (Musgrove had proposed
changing the state flag once the State Supreme Court ruled that Mississippi had no
official flag). Cripps provided seven pieces of evidence for his claim that there was an
ongoing “campaign of ethnic cleansing” in Mississippi, all involving challenges to the
battle flag. To these challenges, Cripps (2000) responded,
True Mississippians say: “Enough is Enough!” It’s time to free Mississippi
from the clutches of big government, big business, big media, and big
religion, all of which are complicit in this campaign of ethnic cleansing
and cultural genocide. These forces ‘alien to our Sovereign State’ are
strangling the life out of our traditional Christian civilization
That Cripps intertwines religion with the battle flag may not be too surprising given that
he is the pastor of Lumberton, Mississippi’s Confederate Presbyterian Church, which
Cripps refers to as “a denomination in progress” (quoted in Wagster 2000). The Southern
Poverty Law Center (2001) notes that in his sermons “Cripps preaches the virtues of
Southern secession.”
33
The foregoing discussion should not be interpreted to mean that only ideological
fringe groups view the battle flag as a religious symbol. The Lost Cause civil religion of
the white South has evolved over time. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights
Movement helped to spark a backlash revival in the white Lost Cause civil religion that
was strongly segregationist, accepted segregation as part of God’s plan and viewed the
division as critical for America to fulfill its religious destiny (Manis 2005). Under such a
challenge it is arguably not surprising that white southerners adopted the Confederate
battle flag as a holy symbol, and used it as their ‘battle flag’ in the massive resistance
against the Civil Rights Movement and the forces of integration and inclusion.
Manis (2005) suggests that since the 1970s the white South’s civil religious
struggle against regional social change and pluralism has grown into a national conflict.
Conservatives from other parts of the U.S. have joined southern whites due to their fear
that rapid changes generally in American society in recent decades have led to a lessening
of their control over society. Thus, the U.S. has experienced a series of ‘culture wars’
over such issues such as the media, abortion rights, the teaching of evolution in public
schools, and gay rights. As Manis (2005, 179) suggests, however, “For contemporary
Southerners, perhaps the most hotly contested battleground of the culture wars remains
how to deal with the region’s Confederate past . . . [and] no segment of this larger
concern is more controversial than debates about the Confederate flag.” Placing the
battle over the flag within the context of the culture wars, Manis (2005, 179) suggests
that “this issue relates directly to the most wrenching culture war of nineteenth-century
America, the Civil War, and touches upon symbolic meanings of both America and the
34
Confederate South. Because it does, the battle elevates the emotional temperature
wherever and whenever it is joined.”
In this context, many of the region’s whites, and not just those who belong to
Neo-Confederate groups, interpret efforts to remove the Confederate battle emblem as
another aspect of their loss of control over the region and the further erosion of a way of
life. It is also important to note that more ‘mainstream’ white religious leaders have also
been involved in defending the flag. For example, following South Carolina Governor
David Beasley’s call to remove the Confederate battle flag from on top of the state house
dome in 1996, he was “immediately accused of ‘heresy’ and being controlled by the
‘scourge of political correctness’ as ‘propagated by liberal intellectuals and their allies in
the media’ by a group of 16 conservative Christian pastors” (quoted in Webster and Leib
2001, 278)
An “interdenominational coalition of pastors” (Moffitt 1997) in South Carolina
sharply criticized Beasley, issuing a document entitled “A Moral Defense of the
Confederate Flag” (Moffitt 1997, Sebasta and Hague 2002). The group argued that the
flag “is not a symbol of racism, and that the Civil War had less to do with defending
slavery than the desire of Southerners to ‘resist the federal government’s unconstitutional
efforts to subjugate sovereign states’” (Moffitt 1997). The ministers strongly suggested
that the conflict was also a religious war, arguing that
the Civil War was between Confederate Christianity, namely “the friends
of order and regulated freedom” and Union “atheists, socialists,
communists, red republicans, Jacobins” (quoted in Sebasta and Hague
2002, 270).
35
One of the leaders of the group, Pastor Bobby Eubanks of a Southern Baptist church near
Charleston, was highly critical of efforts to remove the flag, claiming it was a “shallow
Promise Keepers’-style theology” of racial reconciliation (quoted in Moffitt 1997).
In Mississippi as well, religious leaders and religiosity became intertwined with
the defense of the flag during the 2001 state flag referendum campaign. Along with the
very visible role played by John Thomas Cripps in defending the battle flag, the pastor of
the Biloxi Christian Church stated publicly that “I am against changing the flag to
appease a group of people based on their ignorance of the Civil War.” Notably, he also
acknowledged that not removing the emblem could lead to an economic boycott of the
state (quoted in Schoenberger 2001). Combining religiosity and whiteness, one longtime resident of Mississippi told the state’s largest newspaper during the 2001 campaign
to the change the state flag that “I don’t think we should change something we hold
sacred just to make a point to (Northerners) . . . I don’t believe in turning over to what the
colored people want. We’ve got our rights, too” (quoted in Schoenberger 2001).
Religion has been tactically interjected into the flag debate as well. A prime
example comes from Georgia Republican State Representative James Mills. In 2001,
Mills, an ordained Baptist minister, was a little-known white legislator from rural north
Georgia. In the 2001 Georgia house debate over changing the state flag to minimize the
battle emblem, Mills introduced an amendment to the bill that would change the flag to
add the United States motto, “In God We Trust” to the proposed flag. Given the state’s
religious orientation, the amendment passed. However, despite proposing and voting for
the amendment to add the motto, Mills then turned around and voted against the bill to
adopt the new flag (which now included the motto he had proposed). While Mills stated
36
that he was not a passionate battle flag defender, he noted that many of his constituents
were, and he had pledged not to vote to change the flag. As to why he therefore proposed
the amendment in the first place, he responded that “I thought it [the proposed flag] was
going to pass and I tried to make it as good as I could, even though I was opposed to it.”
To those who thought the flag would be too visually complicated with the additional
motto, Mills responded that if the flag is “too busy to include ‘In God We Trust’, then
maybe we need to slow down” (quoted in Pettys 2001). Mills’ amendment to add God to
the new flag while actually opposing the new flag proved ironic. Democratic House floor
leaders pushing for passage of the new flag suggested that the addition of the motto may
have secured the additional votes necessary for passage of the new flag in the legislative
chamber (Pettys 2001).
Of course, not only did a white civil religion in the South develop after the Civil War,
but a black civil religion developed as well. As Andrew Manis (2005, 167) suggests, the
central focus of post-bellum black civil religion was “by forcing America to come to
terms with racial difference, by pushing America towards racial equality, African
Americans helped fulfill both the nation’s and their own destinies.” Southern black civil
religion became revitalized during the mid-20th Century Civil Rights Movement. As
Manis (2005, 167) argues, the “Civil Rights Movement can be understood as a
revitalization of a black civil religion, which heightened both the providential
understanding of American history and the particular role of black America within that
history. In this civil religion black Southerners understood the end of segregation as the
fulfillment of their long-cherished hopes for America” in which the country could fulfill
37
its destiny to become a beacon to the world by demonstrating that all peoples can live in
harmony.
Given southern black civil religion’s goals of ending racial divisions in South, it is
not surprising that black religious groups have pressed for boycotts to try to force the
region’s state governments to remove the Confederate battle flag from public spaces.
From their collective perspective, the battle flag constitutes the ultimate symbol of
racism, hatred, and racial division. Among black religious groups taking the lead in these
efforts were the national Southern Christian Leadership Conference and various chapters
of the SCLC in the region (the SCLC was begun by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
as a civil rights organization in the 1950s). In South Carolina, in response to an
economic boycott of the state called for in 1999 by the NAACP, three leading black
American churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, all relocated or
cancelled events scheduled to be held in South Carolina (National Council of Churches
2000). In response to Governor Beasley’s 1997 call to remove the flag from the top of
the South Carolina state house, “more than 700 ministers of the Baptist Education and
Missionary Convention of South Carolina, the state’s largest black Baptist organization,
called for the flag’s removal” (Moffitt 1997).
Moderate predominantly-white religious groups have also entered the region’s flag
debates. In the Mississippi controversy, many moderate religious leaders came out in
favor of removing the battle emblem from the state flag. In December 2000, religious
leaders of the state’s Catholic, Episcopal and United Methodist denominations announced
they would work towards the adoption of a new state flag because “whatever symbolic
38
meaning one may choose to attach to the Confederate emblem, it is clear that the
continued use of our present flag will not unite us for good but will continue to foster
division and cripple our future” (quoted in Sawyer 2000). Their position was endorsed
by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference, a statewide inter-denominational
group of religious leaders that was organized in the 1960s to rebuild African American
churches burned down during the Civil Rights Movement. The Mississippi Religious
Leadership Conference (2000) argued that a new flag would allow Mississippians to
“make a strong statement and witness within our state and to the rest of the our nation
that Mississippi no longer upholds racism and prejudice as commonly held values, and
that racism and hatred will not be honored or embraced.”
However, such sentiments were not held by all members of the state’s religious
communities. For example, conspicuously absent from the initial call by religious leaders
were those from Mississippi’s Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination in
the state. Of the 38 members signing the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference
letter, only three were Southern Baptists, compared with two Jews, a far smaller religious
group in the state (though this is not to suggest that all Southern Baptists opposed the
removal of government sanction for flying the battle emblem. In 2001, the president of
the Southern Baptist Convention, a Georgian, endorsed the minimization of the battle
emblem in that state’s flag [Barnes 2001]). However, one conservative Christian group
endorsed the removal of the battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag. The Reverend
Don Wildmon, leader of the 40,000 member American Family Association,
headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi, called for Mississippians to vote for the new flag
“in part to silence critics who equate Southern pride with racism” (Associated Press
39
2001). In calling for the flag change, however, Wildmon noted that “At times we have
been left with the impression that anyone who votes against the new flag [removing the
battle emblem] is a racist. I don’t believe that” (quoted in Associated Press 2001).
Possibly the most surprising religious ally of those seeking to lower the battle flag in
South Carolina was Bob Jones III, the president of that state’s ultra-conservative,
fundamentalist Bob Jones University. In October 1999, in the wake of the NAACP’s
announced boycott of the state, Jones called for the flag to be removed from the state
house dome in Columbia (Burritt 1999). Jones argued that “The Bible speaks against
giving unnecessary offense. If the flag, where it is, is an offense to some, their feelings
should be addressed.” The Neo-Confederate Council of Conservative Citizens
immediately criticized Jones’ position, stating that “Bob Jones has made a pact with the
devil” (quoted in Davenport 1999).
VI.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
In conclusion, a number of theoretical and conceptual perspectives help to aid in our
understanding of the debates over the Confederate battle flag in the American South,
including iconography, public memory, landscape representation, critical race theory,
whiteness, and religion.
Let us finish with one final thought about the impact of religion on the Confederate
battle flag debates in the region. Given the importance of religion in the South, both
sides have used religious imagery to push their cause. Earlier this decade, given the
strong Christian religiosity of the South, a favorite question to ask before making a
difficult decision was, “What Would Jesus Do?” Not surprisingly, politicians have
40
invoked Jesus’ name during the flag debates. In his 2001 speech imploring the State
Senate to minimize the battle emblem on the state flag, Georgia Governor Roy Barnes
told the body that he had received a letter from a respected former State Senator, that, as
Barnes (2001) noted,
contained these wise words: "People of faith must be guided by a moral
compass that goes beyond political expedience. The Christian faith may
ask `What would Jesus do?' about the state flag. I believe Jesus would
change the flag to unite people.”
However, the impact of the white South’s civil religion on the Confederate flag debate
may have been best addressed by Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin. In 2003,
Franklin, the legislature’s leading battle flag defender, had a change of heart, and rather
than fighting to restore the 1956 battle emblem flag, proposed a new flag. Franklin’s new
flag, which closely resembles the first national flag of the Confederacy, was approved
and now flies as the Georgia state flag. In his speech proposing the flag to the state
House of Representatives, rather than asking “What Would Jesus Do?” about the
appropriateness of having the Confederate battle emblem as part of the state flag,
Franklin instead asked, “What would Robert E. Lee Do?” (quoted in Leib and Webster
2006).
41
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COURT CASES CITED
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
Mississippi Division of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Mississippi State
Conference of NAACP Branches, 774 So. 2d 388 (Miss. 2000)