Photo by Sarah McCammon, NPR |
In the Post, political
scientists Logan Strother, Spencer Piston and Thomas Ogorzalek say displays of the Confederate flag were rare until the civil-rights movement began. “It wasn’t until 1948 that the Confederate flag re-emerged
as a potent political symbol,” they write. “The reason was the Dixiecrat revolt — when Strom
Thurmond led a walkout of white Southerners from the Democratic National
Convention to protest President Harry S. Truman’s push for civil rights. The
Dixiecrats began to use the Confederate flag, which sparked further public
interest in it.”
A few years later, protests against the 1954 Brown v. Board
of Education decision ordering desegregation of public schools prominently
featured the battle flag. In Georgia, a new
state flag was adopted that included it. The man who guided the bill
through the state House, admitted that “The Confederate symbol was
added mostly out of defiance to federal integration orders,” the authors write. “These
symbols were not widely used after the Civil War, but were reintroduced in the
middle of the 20th century by white Southerners to fight against civil rights
for African Americans. These basic historical facts provide more reasons to
dispense with narratives of a racially innocuous Confederate past.”
But in Pleasantville, Iowa, today, Owen Golay flies the battle flag and the "stars and bars" of the Confederate government. "Aside from some people way back in his family tree who fought on both sides in the Civil War, he has no real ties to the South," Sarah McCammon reports for NPR. "Golay says his interest in Civil War history and symbols deepened during the Obama administration, when he felt President Obama was overstepping his executive authority. He says he feels a resonance today with 19th century Southerners' resistance to what they saw as federal overreach.
But in Pleasantville, Iowa, today, Owen Golay flies the battle flag and the "stars and bars" of the Confederate government. "Aside from some people way back in his family tree who fought on both sides in the Civil War, he has no real ties to the South," Sarah McCammon reports for NPR. "Golay says his interest in Civil War history and symbols deepened during the Obama administration, when he felt President Obama was overstepping his executive authority. He says he feels a resonance today with 19th century Southerners' resistance to what they saw as federal overreach.
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