Critics of new flag heckle governor on campaign trail

Jekyll Island -- For two hours, the protesters waited in the sweltering heat, with little shade except that cast by a small forest of old state banners with the Confederate battle emblem.

As noon approached, a dark SUV escaped the nearby resort hotel and breezed by the dockside parking lot. It was what they'd been waiting for, and a handful rushed to the rope that separated them.

For more than a year, this dogged band of protesters, connected by the Internet, has greeted the governor at nearly every public event in which he's participated.

The flaggings, as they're called, have become a ritual of the campaign season. Barnes hasn't been the only target. Members of the Legislature have had flags waved in their direction, too.

But it's the governor who knows many of the participants well enough to call them by name. "I wave at them," he said.

In January 2001, in a lightning maneuver, Barnes pushed through the Legislature a new state flag, one in which the Confederate emblem was shrunk to an eye-straining rectangle.

Ever since, strategists of all stripes have predicted that the issue would play a significant role in the governor's bid for re-election. Every Southern governor who has fiddled with such symbolism has run into trouble. And some experts say the new banner could still be a factor in the Georgia race.

But even "flaggers" concede that their cause has blurred over the past 18 months, complicated by the realities of Georgia's political calculus, changes within the state itself -- and by the events of Sept. 11.

"The truth of the matter is, we only have one flag. It's the flag of the United States of America. I believe I'll stick with it," Barnes said just before he left the Jekyll Island meeting of the Georgia Press Association last month.

The sound bite was fashioned spontaneously by the governor days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the months since, it has been found to work well with focus groups.

Just before Barnes spoke at the island conference, his Republican challengers sat on the same stage. All three favor a statewide referendum on the flag issue.

But none of them has advocated a return to the old flag. One, Bill Byrne, has called the old flag a "divisive symbol." He prefers the version that flew over the state Capitol before the battle emblem was added in 1956.

"We would prefer a candidate that would be in favor of going back to the old flag," said Jack Lipthratt, 47, of Brunswick.

While quite willing to flirt with the flag issue as an example of Barnes' "dictatorial" style, Republicans can't afford to embrace the flaggers too tightly.

"They want them on the bus, without driving the bus," said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University.

To put the GOP squarely behind Confederate symbolism "would be the worst thing the Republican Party could do," Black said. It would drive up African-American turnout in the general election, which would overwhelmingly benefit the Democratic Barnes, Black said. The gain for Republicans among white voters would be minimal, he said.

Generally, Republicans and Democrats agree on who flaggers are: Georgians who were comfortable with the South of years past, not with the one that creeps up on them today. They make up 5 percent to 10 percent of the voting population. And they are mostly white, middle-aged and male.

The Jekyll Island protesters numbered a dozen. One man wore a T-shirt that listed Barnes and every lawmaker who voted to change the flag. A woman wore a dress fashioned of the Confederate battle emblem.

Only two of their number voted for Barnes in 1998. In fact, Barnes strategists are counting on the fact that most of those Georgians angry with the governor over the flag wouldn't have voted for him anyway.

Kipp Pittman, 44, of Willacoochee in South Georgia, said he and his fellow protesters are trying to change that, by engaging in voter registration and encouraging lax voters to turn out. "It's going to bring in new people. That's what we're really hoping for," he said.

Perhaps for that reason, the Barnes campaign wants to avoid any escalation. The campaign contacts the State Patrol or local police and urges them to avoid confrontation. All events have been peaceful. The demonstrators say they're eager to stay within the law.

Flaggings are loosely coordinated by members of three groups: the Southern Party, various chapters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the League of the South.

Bradford Isbell, a Griffin-area resident, is state chairman of the Southern Party. Isbell said anger over the flag change was set aside after Sept. 11. But it has rebounded, if hits on the group's Web site are any measure, he said.

Even so, there is a geographical difference in how the issue is received. "You can almost divide the state into two sections: Atlanta and the rest of Georgia," Isbell said. Slightly more than half the state's votes are in metro Atlanta's 18 counties.

One group has instituted something called Project Wave -- offering a 24-foot pole and the old flag for $33. Nearly 600 have been sold, mostly to Georgians in rural and exurban areas.

It is in vote-rich suburban Atlanta that lines begin to blur for flaggers. In mid-May, state Sen. Charles Tanksley, a Cobb County Republican and a former law partner of the governor's, was flagged for his vote to change the flag.

Seven or eight protesters had ventured into the Galleria area in southeast Cobb County, where Tanksley was holding a $500-a-head fund-raiser at the Georgian Club. The protesters were asked to leave, and they moved to the corner of U.S. 41 and Akers Mill Road.

Twenty years ago, nearly two-thirds of metro Atlanta residents were originally from Georgia. Native Georgians now number less than half. Likewise, there was a time when the Chattahoochee River served as a racial boundary. But no more.

The protesters waving the old flag and Confederate banners on U.S. 41 were in what is now Democratic territory. African-Americans and Hispanics make up a large part of the community.

Most passers-by were polite, but quite a few -- perhaps three in 10, demonstrators said -- shouted obscenities or offered middle-finger salutes.

One of the props devised by demonstrators was a black mannequin with a fuzzy wig, set in a trash can. It was a reference to Jesse Jackson. In 2000, he and other civil rights leaders agreed to put off an economic boycott of Georgia for a year while state leaders worked out the decision to change the flag.

The reference was lost on spectators who saw nothing but the mannequin beneath Confederate battle emblems.

The manager of a clothing store on the same corner called the police to have the demonstrators removed. But by the time the cops arrived, the protest was over. It was 7 p.m., time to go home.

Weeks later, it was announced the mannequin had been retired. Even flaggers have to be careful of the symbols they wield.

The minutes of the 1956 debate do exist and they clearly say that the reason for the change was to prepare for the upcoming centennial of the war.

Uh-huh. You are right and the state of Georgia is wrong and we know that because you repeatedly restate your point. Sure. And Rep. Mackay was just foolin' when he said, "There was only one reason for putting the flag on there, like the gun rack in the back of a pickup truck, it telegraphs a message." And the 1956 General Assembly threw out a flag that was not only nearly identical to the CSA National flag, but was designed by a Confederate Officer, over the objections of nearly twenty Georgia Confederacy heritage groups to honor and memorialize the Confederacy. Sure.

I can just hear ol' Griffin now:

We had to spit on our Confederate Heritage in order to honor it.

The UDC opposed the flag change, but the SCV supported it.

Actually, John B. Gordon Camp himself also spoke out against the 1956 change (if you're at all familiar with the SCV, I'm sure you know who he is). The SCV of the time wanted the Confederate battle flag to be used only by the UDC, SCV and Children of the Confederacy for ceremonial use. Of course, their feelings, and the actual Confederate flag designed by an actual Confederate officer that was already proudly flying from Georgia's flagpoles, weren't as important as taking time out from a legislative session devoted almost entirely to segregation to recognize a centennial that wouldn't happen for another five years. Right.

'And Rep. Mackay was just foolin' when he said, "There was only one reason for putting the flag on there, like the gun rack in the back of a pickup truck, it telegraphs a message."'----

No, he wasnt fooling. The problem is that both you and the current general assembly completely missed the message being sent. The flag symbolises the willingness of the South to fight against a tyrannical federal government that had overstepped its constitutional bounds.

Exactly. They believed that federally mandated equality for blacks was tyrannical and unconstitutional, so they adopted a symbol that showed their opposition and defiance of the government on the civil rights issue.

The 1956 flag had as much to do with memorializing the Confederacy as the 1876 flag had to do with granting women the right to vote.

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