Posted on 11/04/2002 8:49:45 PM PST by stainlessbanner
BILOXI, Miss. - Thousands of soldiers died charging behind the Confederate Battle flag during the bloodiest fighting in American history.
Nearly 140 years after the Civil War, the Rebel flag flies at the center of a new war being waged on the Coast and throughout the South.
Rhetoric about heritage and hatred has replaced bullets and grapeshot. There's no bloodshed in the current fight, just bitterness.
For many, the Rebel flag symbolizes Southern heritage and valor. For many others, it represents slavery, racism and lynchings.
Groups on both sides of the debate appear ready to fight relentlessly for their causes.
Last year, pro-Rebel flag forces routed their anti-flag foes in a statewide referendum, allowing the Confederate battle emblem to remain prominently featured in Mississippi's state flag.
The next engagement in the flag struggle takes place Tuesday, when Harrison County, Miss., voters will decide in a countywide referendum whether the Rebel flag should continue to fly at the public beach display on the Gulfport-Biloxi border.
Regardless of the outcome, the flag will remain a divisive symbol.
"We plan to do what it takes ethically, morally and constitutionally to take it down," said the Rev. Nelson Rivers III, chief operating officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, during an August meeting with The Sun Herald Editorial Board. "It's going to come down. The question only becomes how long will it be and at what price?"
John French, a local businessman and a leader of the Mississippi chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, said if a majority of Harrison County voters want the flag removed, his group will respect their decision.
He is confident pro-flag sentiments will prevail on Tuesday.
"This flag vote's a done deal," he said, adding that the SCV will "never quit defending the flag."
Many flag opponents have said they want the Stars and Bars, the first national flag of the Confederacy, to replace the battle flag at the historic display.
In August, Rivers said the NAACP would accept the switch, but would hold its nose as it did so.
French said it wouldn't be long before the NAACP put the Star and Bars in its cross-hairs, too.
"This is a situation were you give them an inch and they take a mile," he said.
He said the Rebel flag better represents Southern culture than the Stars and Bars.
"You know that it's a Southern flag," he said.
French said most people didn't know what the Stars and Bars was before the current argument started over the beach display.
The NAACP has fought the public display of the Rebel flag in several Southern states.
It called for a business and travel boycott of South Carolina when elected officials refused to remove the Rebel flag from atop the state's capitol building.
South Carolina legislators lowered the flag in July 2000, raising a similar battle flag at a nearby monument to Confederate soldiers.
The NAACP wasn't satisfied. The economic boycott of South Carolina continues.
Many in the business community believe the controversy caused by public display of the Rebel flag frightens investors and hinders economic development.
Last year in Georgia, business interests helped pressure the state Legislature into substantially shrinking the size of the Confederate Battle emblem on the state's flag.
Mississippi business leaders were not nearly as successful in their drive to remove the Rebel banner from the state flag.
Ted Ownby, a history professor at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said the economic argument failed because Mississippi has a smaller industrial base than Georgia.
"When the chamber of commerce speaks in Atlanta, a lot of people listen," Ownby said. "That's not so in Mississippi."
Several Coast business groups have lined up in support of the Rebel flag's removal from the beach display.
Former Gov. William Winter, who spearheaded the unsuccessful effort to effort to change the state flag, said the Rebel flag reinforces negative stereotypes about Mississippi.
"This is not about the Civil War," Winter said. "It's about perception."
Like it or not, the Rebel flag has been "captured" by hate groups, whose attitudes are scorned by the mainstream, he said.
French said corporations care about tax incentives and the bottom line, not the Rebel flag. He said most of the people who visit the Coast aren't concerned about the battle flag at the beach display.
French said there are bad people who support the flag, but that doesn't detract from its importance as a symbol of Southern heritage.
"That flag is everybody's culture," he said. "Whether it's good or bad, it's part of our history. History is important."
FReepmail to get on/off the list ; )
I'm about tired of seeing the argument broken down like this. Why don't they just say 'For most Southerners the flag represents heritage, for those that believe the revisionist history pushed by Dubois and Sandburg among others, it represents something it never stood for.'
It has to be admitted though, the yanks did a good job of coverup. Rewriting history, making sure their pre-war laws are never mentioned, that a certain President hardly mentioned slavery before 1854 (and even then it sounded as if he quoted more from Marx than anything else), and that for the first two years of the war abolition of slavery wasn't even a battlecry. It's true, the victors write the history and in this case boy did they rewrite the history
No kidding, the best history I ever read of the aftermath of the war of Northern Aggresion was in a Independent School District Textbook cleverly titled, "Texas History." It was published as late as the 1930's and is an absolute re-enteration of "just the facts."
Didn't know the "vast right wing corn-spirey" was hatched in the 1930's!
nothing more, nothing less!
free the southland,sw
What boycott? Tourism is up here in SC.
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
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