That is not the issue.
The Confederate flag is as much a part of the history of the entire nation as our current flag. It is from a nasty period in our history but it is an integral part.
The fact that the south chose to fly or display those flags is in all actuality the only thing left they have to be somewhat proud of.
The South was decimated, abused, torn asunder and not rehabilitated. So, in a way, flying the Reb flag for them was a mild form of protest. Did we care from 1865to 2017??
No. We ignored it like adults.
Didn’t people joke after Carter the d__ head was elected, that the “South will rise again”? I think Time magazine (or was it National Lampoon?) showed a picture of the Iwo Jima flag raising being done by a bunch of rebel soldiers in front of the White House.
The bottom line is that while Nazi Germany changed their flag(s), their national anthem to this day is Deutschland Deutschland uber alles...and Japan’s flag no longer has the Imperial sun rays but their flag is the same and they were allowed to retain Emperor Hirohito, a war criminal if there ever was one!
Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America Today
I do not know why those in Jefferson's home county & University, allowed obviously non-Jeffersonians to fly a totalitarian Socialist banner, which clearly was not in the spirit of honoring Robert E. Lee, but that mistake does not change the fact that most of those assembled were there to defend the heritage of one of the noblest Americans of any age.
And anyone who has really studied the history of the 19th Century knows that the differences between the ideology that motivated the Confederacy was the opposite of that which motivated German National Socialism.
Finally, consider what the great Negro educator, Booker T. Washington, had to say about race relations in that era: