Posted on 10/08/2001 8:54:10 AM PDT by sheltonmac
After President Bush gave the order Sept. 23 to raise American flags to full-staff for the first time since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, county employees at Government Plaza raised local flags as well -- with a little-noticed difference.
Instead of the Confederacy's First National Flag, which has flown next to Government Plaza for the last seven or eight years, the employees raised the Confederacy's Third National Flag.
The First National Flag, known as the Stars and Bars, resembles the American flag. The Third National Flag has a blue, star-covered St. Andrew's Cross, basically the same design as the Confederate Battle Flag, in the canton and a broad red vertical stripe on the flying end.
Mobile County Commissioners Freeman Jockisch and Mike Dean said they switched the flags to show unity with other levels of government in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
The city of Mobile flies the Third National Flag, but no Confederate flags fly atop the Capitol in Montgomery. At a Confederate monument near the Capitol, all four Confederate flags -- the three national flags and the Battle Flag -- are posted. At the First White House of the Confederacy, only the First National Flag is flown.
Dean said the flags were changed without fanfare and without any notification, because he didn't want any "grandstanding."
Noticeably absent from the decision to change the flags was Commission President Sam Jones, who said he was informed about switching the flags after the other two commissioners had made up their minds.
The flag change "is of little or no interest to me at all," Jones said. "I was more concerned with the real (American) flag at this point. ... Considering the state of the country, this is the most trivial thing I could be involved with."
Tim Meadows, chairman of the South Alabama Council of Conservative Citizens, said the commissioners decided to "sneak it in ... and not bring a lot of attention. All this stuff with the bombings with the twin towers and all has gotten people's attention."
Meadows said his group preferred the Third National Flag over the First National Flag because the Third was the last flag of the Confederacy. But there is some disagreement over whether that flag flew over Mobile.
The Council of Conservative Citizens has campaigned in support of the Battle Flag since last year, when the city of Mobile decided to remove it from the city seal and start flying the Third National Flag.
Throughout the South, official displays of the Battle Flag have been called into question, because the flag was adopted by white supremacist groups, and many blacks now find it to be a symbol of racism.
Meadows said his group's quest to raise the Battle Flag is now over.
"The way we see it, we've got the battle flag," he said, referring to the reproduction of the Battle Flag depicted in the canton of the Third National Flag. "We've got more than just the Battle Flag. That flag represented the men who died on the battlefield. And now we've also got the flag that represented the government."
The Council of Conservative Citizens has waged a small-scale public relations campaign against Jockisch, who until recently opposed raising the Third National Flag. This week, he said, he had changed his mind after concluding there is no difference between the First and the Third National flags.
Jockisch said the group's efforts -- which he described as "all 10 of them getting out there and doing their whole bit" -- didn't affect his decision. "I don't do things by threat," he said.
Makes you want to move to Mobile when you hear something like that. A city not arguing over whether or not to fly the flag of their ancestors, freedom loving folk, but which one to fly!!!
Many blacks now find the US flag to be a "symbol of racism."
Not many things aren't a "symbol of racism" these days.
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