GeoJournal 52: 303–310, 2000.
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
303
Rebel with a cause? Iconography and public memory in the Southern United
States
Jonathan I. Leib1∗ , Gerald R. Webster 2 & Roberta H. Webster 2
1 Florida
State University, Department of Geography, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-2190, U.S.A.; 2 University of Alabama,
Department of Geography, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, U.S.A.; (∗ Author for correspondence Tel: (850) 644-8375;
Fax: (850) 644-5913; e-mail: [email protected])
Received 1 January 2001; accepted 11 January 2001
Key words: Confederate battle flag, iconography, public memory, American South
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed debates in the American South between traditional white Southerners and African American
Southerners over whether and how symbols from the region’s two defining historical events – the Civil War and the Civil
Rights movement – are displayed on the region’s landscape. This paper examines the most contentious of these debates,
the conflict over government sanction for flying the various flags of the Confederate States of America. This article first
discusses the concepts of iconography and public memory, and then the role of Confederate flags in traditional white
Southern iconography. We then examine four recent attempts in the states of Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, and
within the chambers of the U.S. Senate to remove government sanction for flying Confederate flags. We conclude from
these debates that while icons can act as centripetal forces binding a people together, they can also emerge as centrifugal
forces, further splitting apart a region’s population along major cultural and racial divisions.
Introduction
In the 1890s, white Southerners in the United States began
to erect monuments to memorialize and mythologize the
bravery and righteousness of those white Southerners who
defended the “Southern way of life” during the American
Civil War some thirty years earlier (Foster, 1987). A century
later, in the 1990s, African American Southerners began
to create monuments to memorialize and mythologize the
bravery and righteousness of African American Southerners during the Civil Rights Era thirty years earlier in the
1960s. As part of the latter effort to celebrate the destruction of the segregated ‘Jim Crow’ South, African American
Southerners have also battled for the removal of some symbols earlier enshrined by white Southerners to celebrate the
‘Old South’, the heroic efforts of Confederate soldiers, and
the perceived ‘gentility’ of Postbellum social structures. To
many southern African Americans these symbols represent
their Antebellum enslavement and the Postbellum social
system of segregation and racism.
The struggle between white and black Southerners over
the region’s iconography and public memory has now joined
the continuing battles over such overtly tangible issues as
equitable housing and employment (Wilson, 1995; Cobb,
1999). These ever escalating controversies center upon the
competing visions of black Southerners and traditional white
Southerners over how and where Southern history and culture should be presented and preserved on the landscape. In
this battle, both groups are trying to shape the region’s pub-
lic memory through the control of the symbolism displayed
throughout the region, whether it be placing memorials and
museums in the region’s parks, the naming of the region’s
streets, or flying flags of specific designs over public spaces
and government buildings. Thus, the region arguably contains two groups or ‘nations’ with divergent visions of the
past, present and future of the South, both competing for the
right to culturally define the same space (Webster and Leib,
2001).
Gottmann (1951, 1952) envisioned a people’s iconography as a set of common symbols used to help bind a group
of people together within and to a territory, and thus acting
as centripetal forces. But the competing iconographies of
American Southerners have increasingly served as centrifugal forces, splintering the region’s population. The battles
over these symbols and their placement on the landscape
have very real consequences for whose vision of the public
memory will prevail in the region as it enters the new millennium. Thus, this struggle to commemorate the region’s past
on the landscape is part of the larger fight to define the terms
of engagement in the debate over the region’s future.
This paper concentrates on the most contentious battle of
this wider ‘cultural war’, specifically the conflict pertaining
to the removal of government sanction for the flying of the
various flags of the Confederate States of America (1861–
1865). The first part of this article examines the concepts of
iconography and public memory, and the role of Confederate
flags in traditional white Southern iconography. The second
part of the article outlines four recent attempts to remove
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Confederate flags from the landscape. While three of these
examples pertain to single states (Alabama, Georgia and
South Carolina), the fourth was fought outside the region
in the chambers of the United States Senate.
Iconography and public memory
Some have tried to dismiss the debate over the placement
of Southern symbols on the landscape as irrelevant to the
daily lives of both white and black Southerners. But the
intensity of the debates throughout the South suggests otherwise. Whether over the flying of the Confederate battle
flag, the playing of ‘Dixie’, the naming of streets for Dr
Martin Luther King, Jr., or the building of civil rights monuments and memorials, the heated character of these struggles
reinforces Zelinsky’s (1988) assertion that symbols are of
great importance to American nationalism (e.g., Webster and
Webster, 1994; Webster and Leib, forthcoming; Webster
and Leib, 2001; Leib, 1995, 1998, forthcoming; Alderman,
1996; Dwyer, 1999).
Symbols are a central element of a political territory’s
iconography and include monuments, flags and street names.
As Taylor (1993, p. 150) suggests, iconography ‘is a set
of symbols in which people believe, encompassing elements of national feeling from the state flag to the culture
transmitted through the state’s schools’. But it is also clear
that the meaning of these icons do not remain permanent
throughout history but are continuously evolving. As Bodnar (1992, p. 13) argues, ‘the shaping of a past worthy
of public commemoration in the present is contested and
involves a struggle for supremacy between advocates of various political ideas and sentiments’. The current struggles
in the South over the symbols of the Civil War and Civil
Rights movement are debates between advocates of various
political visions over what Bodnar (1992, 1994) refers to as
‘public memory’. According to Bodnar (1992, p. 15), public
memory:
is a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help
a public or society understand both its past, present,
and by implication, its future. It is fashioned ideally
in a public sphere in which various parts of the social structure exchange views. The major focus of this
communicative and cognitive process is not the past,
however, but serious matters in the present such as the
nature of power. . .
The ongoing battles over whose iconography will appear
in the public spaces of the South are therefore not simply fights concerning how to preserve Southern history on
the landscape. Rather, these battles are over the eventual
nature of the region’s public memory, which has substantive implications for the division of political power in the
region. The definition, preservation and creation of ‘significant’ landscapes and the creation of monuments on these
landscapes memorializing past historical events are not benign processes, but instead are imbued with much deeper
political meaning and symbolism (Cosgrove and Daniels,
1988; Mitchell, 1992; Johnson, 1994, 1995; Foote, 1997;
Figure 1. (a) First flag of the Confederacy, ‘Stars and Bars’, March 4,
1861–May 1, 1863. (b) Confederate Navy Jack after May 26, 1863, ‘Battle
Flag’.
Leib, forthcoming). Indeed, the struggle to win the right to
place such iconography on the landscape is a heated contest
over who will wield political power in both the present and
future.
Confederate flags and traditional white Southern
iconography
The Confederate battle emblem is controversial in the American South because of the different meanings that people
ascribe to the flag. The battle flag is one of four main flags
associated with the Confederate States of America. The first
national flag of the Confederacy (Figure 1(a)) was similar
in design to the United States of America flag, and this
similarity caused confusion on the battle field during the
early stages of the American Civil War. As a result, a new
flag was used in battle, the now-familiar ‘rebel flag’, which
features a blue ‘X’ embedded with white stars on a field of
red (Figure 1(b)). In addition to being used in battle, this
emblem was also prominently featured on the second and
third national flags of the Confederacy (Cannon, 1988).
The battle emblem has taken on multiple meanings over
the past century (Wellikoff, 1994). It was incorporated into
the Georgia state flag in 1956, and raised over the state capitol buildings of South Carolina and Alabama in the early
1960s. Proponents of the battle flag argue that it was raised to
honor the memory of the soldiers of the Confederacy during
the Civil War Centenary of the 1960s (e.g., Fortson, 1957).
In contrast, Confederate battle flag opponents ascribe more
sinister meanings to the flag, including that it is a reminder
of the Confederacy and efforts to preserve the slave system. Opponents also argue that the flag was a major symbol
for those in the 1950s and 1960s who opposed integration
and the destruction of the segregated ‘Jim Crow’ system in
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the South (Woodward, 1974; Kennedy, 1990; Leib, 1995,
1998). While used by many ‘mainstream’ southerners, the
flag was (and still is today) also employed by various extremist groups including the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi
organizations as a rallying symbol.
The Confederate battle flag has been the preeminent target in the debates over how space is to be defined culturally
in the American South. Along with debates over whether
local governments, state governments, or the federal government should sanction the flying of Confederate flags, the
battle flag has been used by those opposing the commemoration of the Civil Rights movement. For example, in January
1997 a monument in central Alabama to Viola Liuzzo had
a rebel flag spray painted on it by vandals (Birmingham
News, 1997). Ms. Liuzzo was a civil rights activist murdered
by members of the Ku Klux Klan during the historic voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in
1965 (Williams, 1987). The monument has been repeatedly
vandalized since it was erected in 1991.
Flag supporters, however, deny that there are racist connotations to the battle emblem, instead arguing that it stands
as a proud symbol of their white Southern heritage. Flag
defenders have vigorously resisted attempts to remove the
Confederate emblem from state capitols because of their
fears that to do so would give official sanction to the notion that they should be ashamed of their Southern heritage.
At times the vitriol invoked by flag defenders has bordered
on the absurd. In a speech televised statewide in November
1996, South Carolina Republican State Senator Glenn McConnell drew a direct comparison between South Carolina
Governor David Beasley’s proposal to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina state capitol in
response to pressure from business and African American
civil rights leaders, and Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement
of Adolph Hitler in the late 1930s (Charlotte Observer,
1996; Sponhour, 1996b).
In the remainder of this paper we examine four prominent Confederate flag debates during the 1990s: three in the
‘Deep South’ states of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, and the last in the chambers of the U.S. Senate. While
some may view these debates as over a mere piece of cloth,
their intensity demonstrates the power of this Civil War icon
nearly 140 years after that conflict’s conclusion.
Alabama
The Deep South state of Alabama constituted a dominant
hearth for the development of Antebellum Southern culture
(Webster and Samson, 1992). Likely as a result, the state
was also the site of many of the most significant ‘battles’
fought during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in
such cities as Selma, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and the state
capital of Montgomery (Clark, 1993). Though the era of
overt violence in defiance to desegregation is largely concluded, racial polarization continues on a number of fronts
including equal access to jobs and housing, voting preferences (Davidson and Grofman, 1994), and over the public
display of the Confederate battle flag.
The Confederate battle flag was raised above the state
capitol building at Montgomery in 1963 by former Governor George Wallace. Though debated, the bulk of the
evidence strongly indicates that Wallace’s motivation for
raising the battle flag was to demonstrate his disgust over the
federal government’s efforts to desegregate the University
of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (Webster and Leib forthcoming). The flag was hoisted above the state capitol the day
U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy visited Wallace to
negotiate a peaceful resolution to efforts by two African
American students to enroll at the University. The meeting
between Kennedy and Wallace accomplished little other than
providing the Governor with press attention to defiantly restate his opposition to desegregation of the state’s all-white
universities (Clark, 1993).
The Confederate battle flag remained atop the state capitol with the U.S. flag and the Alabama state flag until 1987
when all three were removed so that the capitol dome could
be renovated. Prior to the completion of the renovations in
late 1992, an African American state representative filed a
lawsuit against the state in an effort to prohibit the battle
flag from again being raised above the state capitol. Using a
state law passed in 1895 which instructed only that the U.S.
flag and Alabama state flag be displayed over the capitol
building, a local judge ordered the state not to return the
battle flag to the capitol. In response to this decision, the
Ku Klux Klan held a march in Montgomery to demand that
the flag be again placed atop the capitol building. While the
Klansmen did not wear their signature hooded robes, they
did prominently display the battle flag and suggested that
the flag had nothing to do with the enslavement of African
Americans. As the spokesperson of the marchers suggested,
the slaves “had good food, a good warm bed and security”
(quoted in Poovey, 1993).
The judge’s decision was subsequently appealed by then
Governor Guy Hunt, a conservative Republican. Before the
appeals process could be completed, Governor Hunt was
removed from office for ethics violations. His successor,
moderate Democrat James Folsom, Jr., dropped the appeal
and issued an executive order that the Confederate battle flag
not be returned to the capitol dome. Governor Folsom’s decision set off a firestorm of controversy and he was heavily
criticized by many white Alabamians who view the battle
flag as an indication of a proud Southern heritage and not
as a symbol of slavery and racism. In response, he arranged
for an area on the grounds of the state capitol to be used
for displaying the four primary flags associated with the
Confederacy, including the battle flag.
It is also notable that early in 1993 the state of Alabama
was one of many jurisdictions in the United States vying for
an assembly plant to be built by German automaker Mercedes Benz. After Governor Folsom’s executive order it was
suggested in the press that a primary motivation for not returning the battle flag to the capitol dome was its negative
impact upon the state’s chances for securing the plant. Mercedes Benz officials announced in September 1993 that they
would locate the $300 million plant in central Alabama.
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Governor Folsom’s bid for reelection in 1994 was unsuccessful due to a number of controversies including his
decision not to return the battle flag to the capitol dome.
His successful opponent, Republican Governor Fob James,
was the target of continuous pressure to return the flag to
atop the capitol dome. However, James, and his Democratic
successor Don Siegelman, were successfully able to avoid
becoming embroiled in the flag issue.
This does not mean that the flag issue has gone away, as
both flag proponents and flag opponents continue to vocally
advance their views. Since 1994 there have been numerous
proposals to return the flag to the capitol dome, the flag has
been a topic in nearly every annual meeting of the state legislature, and bills have been filed in the legislature throughout
the past seven sessions to restore the flag. In March 2000,
a Southern independence rally at the Alabama capitol drew
approximately 2,500 participants, numerous battle flags, and
calls for the flag to go back on top of the dome. The next day,
U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking in Selma, Alabama at
the 35th anniversary celebration of the 1965 Voting Rights
March, summed up the debate over the flag by invoking the
main symbol of that march, Selma’s Edmund Pettis Bridge.
As Clinton told the crowd at the celebration, “As long as
the waving symbol of one American’s pride is the shameful
symbol of another American’s pain, we have another bridge
to cross” (quoted in Ross, 2000).
At the same time, battle flag opponents in Alabama have
voiced their objections to the flag. In 1999, a state legislator
opposed to the flag convinced the Clerk of the state’s House
of Representatives to replace the battle flag flying within the
state House chambers with the first national flag of the Confederacy (which had flown over the capitol in 1861 during
Montgomery’s four month stint as the Confederate capital).
Despite that both are Confederate flags, battle flag supporters in the House (exclusively white and predominantly
Republican) argued that the flag switch (and specifically the
removal of the battle flag) was an affront to their Southern
heritage. However, their attempt to restore the battle flag to
the House chambers was ultimately unsuccessful (Webster
and Leib, forthcoming).
Georgia
At the same time that lawsuits were being filed in Alabama,
that state’s neighbor to the east, Georgia, was undergoing
its own flag controversy concerning the incorporation of the
Confederate battle emblem into the Georgia state flag. The
original Georgia state flag designed in the late 1700s featured the state seal placed on a blue field. In 1879, the flag
was redesigned, with the new banner having a vertical blue
bar on the left side, with the right two-thirds divided into
three horizontal bars, one of white and two of scarlet (the
state seal was added to this new flag in 1905). This flag was
similar to the first national flag of the Confederacy. In 1956,
the state legislature once again changed the flag, this time
replacing the scarlet and white bars on the right two-thirds
of the flag with the Confederate battle emblem (Leib, 1995).
In May 1992, Georgia’s Governor Zell Miller, a Democrat, announced his plan to pressure the legislature to
remove the battle emblem from the state flag, and return
to the pre-1956 flag. Miller called the battle emblem a
“symbol of injustice and division and strife” (quoted in
Leff, 1992), and the “fighting flag of those who wanted
to preserve a segregated South” (quoted in Opdyke, 1992).
While there were many reasons for Miller’s proposal, one
of the most important was fear within the business community in Atlanta, Georgia’s largest city and capital, that
outsiders would equate the flag with racism. With the national and international spotlight to be turned on Atlanta as a
result of its hosting high profile sporting events, such as the
1994 American football Super Bowl and the 1996 Summer
Olympics, business leaders wanted the flag changed so that
it would not repel potential investment from both national
and international sources.
Several businesses and localities did not wait for government action before they began removing the flag. Holiday
Inns Worldwide, headquartered in Atlanta, asked their hotels in Georgia to remove the state flag from their properties
(though not all complied), while the city of Atlanta’s Board
of Education directed public schools not to fly the state flag
on school property. The Atlanta city council also removed
the flag from their chambers, and the city’s Mayor pledged
that the flag would not fly at Olympic venues in the city.
Flag defenders in the state legislature threatened to cut off
state funding to any city, including Atlanta, that refused to
fly the flag (Leib, 1995).
A vociferous debate over the flag issue occurred throughout Georgia during the state legislature’s three month 1993
session. Governor Miller all but assured the ‘flag flap’ would
dominate the legislature’s session and public debate throughout the state by devoting approximately one-third of his State
of the State address at the beginning of the session to the
issue. The legislative and public debate became increasingly
heated, dividing the state between those who see the emblem
as a proud symbol of heritage and white southern identification from those who viewed the flag as a symbol of racism
and hate. Indeed, one of the state’s leading political columnists noted that the flag had become “the most divisive issue
to strike Georgia government in decades” (Shipp, 1993).
Much of the debate revolved around what intended message the 1956 legislature wished to deliver when they added
the battle emblem to the state flag. Proponents of the emblem
argued that with the Civil War Centennial approaching, it
was added as a tribute to the brave soldiers of the Confederacy. Opponents argued that given the change was made
during the Civil Rights struggle, it was intended to underscore the state’s resolve to defy the federal government’s
attempts to integrate the state and destroy the ‘Jim Crow’
system of segregation (Leib, 1995).
Statewide public opinion polls indicated that a majority of Georgians wanted the battle emblem retained in the
state flag, though polls also demonstrated that opinion was
split along racial lines. While a majority of white Georgians supported keeping the battle emblem, a majority of
Georgia’s African Americans wanted the emblem removed
(Harvey, 1992). A poll of state legislators taken by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution just prior to the 1993 legislative
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session found similar results. While 66% of all legislators wanted to retain the battle emblem, 88% of African
American legislators wanted the emblem removed (Walston, 1993). Support for the battle emblem was concentrated
among legislators from white population-majority legislative districts in rural parts of the state and in the suburbs
surrounding Georgia’s largest cities. In contrast, opposition
to the flag was concentrated primarily among legislators
from African American population-majority districts (Leib,
1995).
In the end, the legislature refused to vote on the controversial issue, with one Miller ally in the legislature summing
up the feelings of many of his colleagues by noting that the
battle emblem was an issue that many members of the legislature “would like to see go away” (quoted in Salzer, 1993).
In March 1993, realizing that he did not have the votes in the
legislature to remove the battle emblem, Miller withdrew the
legislative bill from consideration, and pledged to halt the
fight to remove the battle emblem from the state flag (Leib,
1995).
Governor Miller’s high-profile efforts seriously eroded
his support among white Georgians and nearly cost him reelection to a second term as Governor in 1994. Given the
support that the current state flag has among white Georgians, no serious attempt was made again in the 1990s to
change the flag. A public opinion poll taken in 2000 reported
that 56% of Georgians wanted to retain the flag, while only
31% wanted the battle emblem removed. However, the flag
issue in Georgia is beginning to reemerge, as some civil
rights groups have stepped up efforts recently to change the
state flag, students at one Atlanta area high school voted to
stop flying the flag outside their school building, and two
of Georgia’s three African American members of Congress
are refusing to fly it outside their Congressional offices (McMurray, 2000). Hence, Georgia may become the next major
battleground over the flag.
United Daughters of the Confederacy
While most of the controversies pertaining to the flags of
the Confederacy have raged in the South, occasionally they
have spilled out into the country at large. The preeminent
example of the ‘nationalization’ of this regional controversy
was the 1993 debate in the U.S. Senate over the renewal
of the patent for the insignia of the United Daughters of
the Confederacy (UDC). Although most patent renewals are
confirmed in the U.S. Office of Patents and Trademarks,
Congress has the power to grant and renew patents and has
done so approximately a dozen times since 1900. In the past,
these patents have all been granted to patriotic organizations
such as the UDC, American Legion, and Daughters of Union
Veterans. Such groups apply for patents and patent renewals
in the U.S. Senate because of the prestige conferred by such
actions in the legislative body (Webster and Webster, 1994).
The insignia of the United Daughters of the Confederacy
includes in its design the first flag of the Confederate States
of America (Figure 1(a)), an emblem generally far less wellrecognized and controversial than the Confederate battle flag
(Figure 1(b)) (Cannon, 1988). The first flag of the Confed-
erate States of America, commonly referred to as the ‘Stars
and Bars’, was the official flag of the Confederacy between
March 1861 and May 1863. It was replaced in 1863 because
it too closely resembled the United States flag and caused
confusion on the battlefield during the American Civil War.
The UDC logo patent had been granted and renewed
by the U.S. Senate on four occasions since 1926, without
controversy or debate. But in May 1993 the bill for renewal
was challenged and stalled by Senator Carol Moseley-Braun
in the Senate Judiciary Committee (the Committee must
act upon bills before they reach the floor of the Senate).
Moseley-Braun, a Democrat from Illinois, was the only
African American seated in the Senate at the time. In July
1993, while Senator Moseley-Braun was not in the Senate’s
Chambers, arch-conservative Senators Jesse Helms from
North Carolina and Strom Thurmond from South Carolina
resurrected the bill before the full Senate by attaching it as
an amendment to another bill before the body.
Upon hearing about the events on the Senate floor, Senator Moseley-Braun returned to the Senate and presented
a motion to reconsider the amendment by Senators Helms
and Thurmond. Her motion was defeated by a 48 to 52
vote. Threatening to “filibuster until this room freezes over”,
Senator Moseley-Braun gave an impassioned speech over
the meaning of the Confederacy and Confederate flags to
African Americans (quoted in Webster and Webster, 1994).
She was eventually joined by Senator Howell Heflin, a
senior white legislator from the ‘Deep South’ state of Alabama, who changed his vote and provided an additional
impassioned speech in support of rejecting the patent renewal.
Senator Heflin’s support proved pivotal and Senator
Moseley-Braun’s motion to reconsider the Helms-Thurmond
amendment was resurrected. After several hours of contentious debate the Senate rejected the patent renewal by
a vote of 75 to 25, with 27 Senators altering their earlier
votes to support Senator Moseley-Braun. The eventual vote
was significantly regional with 41% of Senators from the
former Confederate states opposing Senator Moseley-Braun,
and 91% of Senators from former Union states supporting
her. Senator Heflin was pummeled by the UDC as well as
other southern organizations and activists in the media, and
was voted the ‘1993 Scalawag of the Year’ by an Alabama
chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The controversy flared again in 1999, when MoseleyBraun, defeated for reelection the year before, was nominated as U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand. Her nomination
had to be approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Jesse Helms. Senator Helms balked at
holding hearings on Moseley-Braun’s nomination because
of her stand six years earlier on the UDC patent renewal.
Towards breaking the deadlock, Helms was quoted as stating that “At the very minimum she has got to apologize
for the display she provoked over a little symbol for a
wonderful group of little old ladies” (quoted in Preston,
1999). Moseley-Braun did not apologize and Helms vowed
to block her nomination. U.S. Vice President Al Gore came
to Moseley-Braun’s defense, verbally attacking Helms and
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backing Moseley-Braun’s stand on the patent renewal (Gore,
1999; Dorning, 1999). While Helms successfully held up
Moseley-Braun’s nomination for several weeks, the U.S.
Senate voted overwhelmingly in November 1999 to approve
her ambassadorship.
South Carolina
The most hotly debated recent Confederate battle flag controversy took place in South Carolina. In 1962, the battle flag
was raised over the South Carolina state capitol in Columbia
during the Civil War Centenary and at a time when much
of the state’s white political establishment opposed integration. Members of the South Carolina legislature started
discussing removing the flag in October 1993 following
Mercedes Benz’s decision to locate their first North American plant in Alabama instead of South Carolina. Questions
arose concerning whether the flag was viewed by outsiders
as a symbol of racism and was therefore negatively impacting the decisions of potential investors (Tuscaloosa News,
1993; The Economist, 1994).
During Summer 1994, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the country’s leading civil rights organizations, sponsored protest
marches in South Carolina and threatened an economic boycott if the flag was not removed from atop the state capitol.
Also during Summer 1994, 76% of South Carolina’s Republicans casting ballots in a non-binding referendum presented
on the state’s Republican primary ballot voted to keep the
flag flying. Numerous solutions have been proposed since
1993, from moving the flag off the top of the capitol dome to
another spot on the capitol grounds (as was eventually done
in Alabama) to flying the black liberation flag along side the
Confederate battle flag above the capitol building’s dome. A
lengthy and heated debate during the state legislature’s 1994
session failed to resolve the issue.
The debate over the flag was catapulted back into the
spotlight in November 1996, when conservative Republican Governor David Beasley made a rare statewide televised
speech calling for the flag’s removal (Sponhour, 1996a,
1996b; Eichel, 1996a). Beasley ran for office in 1994 on
a pledge to support flying the battle flag on top of the state
capitol and in 1995 signed legislation that strengthened the
legal standing on which the flag flew. Beasley changed his
position following an escalation of racial tensions in the
state, including a rash of African American church burnings and increased activities by the Ku Klux Klan (Bandy,
1996). His concern over worsening race relations and their
negative impact on efforts to lure new business to the state
led the governor to state that it is time to “compromise on
the Confederate flag, and teach our children that we can live
together” (quoted in Bragg, 1996).
Beasley’s proposal to remove the flag was similar to
one debated in the state legislature in 1994. He suggested
moving the flag from the top of the state capitol dome
to a Confederate soldiers’ monument in front of the state
capitol, while officially protecting other Confederate monuments and street names throughout the state. The proposal
also attempted to end the debate over the flag’s meaning by
entering a statement into the “permanent state record . . .
declaring the battle flag a nonpolitical symbol of heritage”
(Scoppe, 1997a). The proposal to relocate the flag received
the support of the state’s legislative black caucus, former
South Carolina governors, and several members of the state’s
congressional delegation. Included among these supporters was U.S. Senator and former South Carolina Governor
Strom Thurmond, who was the presidential nominee of the
‘Dixiecrats’ in 1948. The Dixiecrats broke away from the national Democratic Party in 1948 to oppose the party’s modest
civil rights reform proposals (Webster, 1992). Supporters of
Thurmond’s Dixiecrat party used the battle flag as a rallying
symbol (Eichel, 1996b). A public opinion poll taken after the
presentation of Beasley’s proposal indicated that, for the first
time, a majority of the state’s citizens agreed with the decision to remove the flag from the top of the capitol (Scoppe,
1997a).
Governor Beasley’s proposal to relocate the Confederate
battle flag faced strong opposition in the state legislature.
While Democrats overwhelmingly supported the proposal,
intense opposition was found within Beasley’s own Republican party. A January 1997 poll showed that 67% of Republican state lawmakers opposed removing the flag, compared
to only 13% of the legislature’s Democrats (Scoppe, 1997b).
Increasingly harsh rhetoric by some Republican flag supporters made compromise difficult. Republican State Senator Glenn McConnell told a statewide television audience
that to remove the flag would be an act of “cultural genocide”
(quoted in Sponhour, 1996b). The state’s Attorney General,
Republican Charlie Condon, considered at the time a potential Republican primary challenger to Beasley’s reelection,
argued that if the flag is moved “the children of South Carolina will be taught, in the name of political correctness, to
be ashamed of their state’s history” (quoted in Sponhour,
1996b). Flag opponents supported Beasley despite that, by
relocating the flag from on top of the dome to ground level in
front of the capitol, the flag would become far more visible
to most citizens than it had been before.
In the end, Beasley’s proposal was not enacted by the
legislature. While Beasley received support from African
American Democrats in the legislature, white Republicans
overwhelmingly rejected Beasley’s proposal and introduced
substitute legislation on the flag aimed at embarrassing the
Governor of their own party (Webster and Leib, 2001). The
flag issue dominated the 1997 session, as Beasley ultimately
alienated much of his core supporters. The flag issue came
back to haunt Beasley in 1998, when he was defeated for
reelection by Democrat Jim Hodges. While the flag was not
the only issue that led to his defeat, it did erode his base of
support among the state’s conservative white voters.
Hodges won election with considerable support from
African American voters (Hill, 2000). While Hodges initially stayed out of the flag debate, by late 1999 he could no
longer avoid the controversy. In Summer 1999, the NAACP
called for an economic boycott of the state for flying the
flag in attempt to disrupt the state’s multi-billion dollar
tourism industry (NAACP, 1999). By March 2000, at least
100 conventions and meetings had been cancelled, and po-
309
litical leaders in many of the state’s largest cities called
for the flag’s removal (Webster and Leib, 2001). As well,
the flag debate jumped from the local to the national scale
as it became an issue in the 2000 presidential election, as
Republican candidates George W. Bush and John McCain
were forced to address the topic (suggesting that only South
Carolinians could decide the flag’s fate), while Democratic
candidates Al Gore and Bill Bradley called for the flag’s
removal.
The flag debate heated up in January 2000, as major
rallies were held at the South Carolina state capitol both
by flag proponents and opponents. Governor Hodges took
a public stand arguing for the flag to be removed from the
capitol dome (Hodges, 2000), while a public opinion survey
of South Carolinians showed a solid majority in favor of the
flag’s removal (Associated Press, 2000).
While a majority of South Carolinians agreed that the
flag should removed, there was little agreement as to where
it should be removed to. Seeing that public opinion increasingly approved of the flag’s removal from the state house
dome, flag proponents agreed to support the 1997 compromise placing the flag at the Confederate soldier statue in
front of the capitol building. Flag opponents, buoyed by
growing public opposition to the flag’s location above the
capitol, argued that the flag should be moved entirely off the
state house grounds. A variety of compromises were proposed during the first three months of 2000, but with little
agreement (e.g., Stroud, 2000a).
Finally in April 2000, the State Senate and State House
voted to move the flag from the top of the capitol to a flag
pole located at the Confederate soldier statue in front of the
capitol. In the Senate, black and white Senators came together to forge a compromise, with six of the seven black
Senators voting for the bill. However, the biracial cooperation displayed in the Senate did not extend to the House,
where only four of that body’s 26 black Representatives
voted in favor of the compromise (Stroud, 2000b).
In May 2000 Governor Hodges signed the legislation
moving the flag from the capitol dome to the Confederate
solider monument, noting that “Today, the descendants of
slaves and the descendants of Confederate soldiers join together in the spirit of mutual respect” (quoted in Eichel,
2000). However, while the flag was formally moved on July
1, not all of the state’s residents are happy with the compromise. Some white flag proponents have vowed to vote
out of office any legislator who voted for the compromise,
while the NAACP has maintained its economic boycott of
the state until the flag is removed permanently from the state
house grounds. Given the passionate feelings on both sides
of the debate, it is unlikely that the issue will be laid to rest
in the foreseeable future.
Conclusion
The recent disputes in the U.S. Senate and in the states of
Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina over how Confederate flags are to be seared into the public memory, whether
as symbols of heritage or symbols of hate, are not simply battles to (re)define the past. Rather they are over who
will shape the public memory of the past, and who will
wield political power in the present and the future. Gottmann
envisioned a region’s iconography as including a common
set of symbols and understanding which act as centripetal
forces to bind a people together. But the disputes over the
various flags of the Confederacy in the American South
demonstrate that contrasting interpretations of a region’s
iconography may also emerge as centrifugal forces, further
splitting apart a region’s population along major cultural and
racial divisions.
The disputes over the display of the battle flag are far
from settled in the region. While the flag has been removed
from on top of the South Carolina and Alabama capitol
buildings, the NAACP has vowed to continue its economic
boycott of South Carolina until the flag is removed entirely from the statehouse grounds, and the organization is
monitoring the flag’s use in Alabama (Rawls, 2000).
The next major battlegrounds for the flag debate are
likely to be in the two states that incorporate the battle emblem within their state flags: Georgia and Mississippi. While
the Georgia debate has laid dormant since 1993, there is
evidence to suggest that the flag may become a major issue
again over the next several years (McMurray, 2000). In Mississippi, which in 1894 incorporated the battle emblem into
its state flag, several events in 2000 marked the first serious
effort to remove the emblem, including an attempt to change
the flag in the state legislature, a state Supreme Court case
concerning the constitutionality of the flag, a Governor’s
commission examining the flag’s future, and an attempt by
battle emblem defenders to put the flag to a statewide vote
(Ammerman, 2000; Payne, 2000; Wagster, 2000; Rossilli,
2000; Mississippi Division of the United Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Mississippi State Conference of NAACP
Branches et al., 2000). These vitriolic disputes over this icon
will likely continue into the future. Nearly 140 years after the
end of the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag continues to
be an icon that divides the region’s population.
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