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.

When the flag was coopted by hate groups without a fight from those who claim that it is heratige and not hate they lost the rights to the flag in my opinion.

How about this? Two things required at KKK meetings/gatherings are 1) the American flag and 2) the Holy Bible. The Confederate battle flag is not required, by the way.

So tell me, who is fighting the KKK for property rights on those two items? Have you ever taken them on regarding either? Should you quit flying the US flag because it has been franchised by a hate group? Should we start burning Bibles because it is associated with a hate group?

I look forward to your response.

Yes, the pre1956 flag was the Stars and Bars(first national flag) with the Stars Replaced by the Georgia Seal. The words of the legilature at the time said that the flag change was to memorialize the soldiers. The man who designed it said that the reason for the 1956 flag was to memorialize the Confederacy(even if it was redundant). The discussion during the presentation and passage of the bill to chang the flag in the 50s never even mentioned Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Y'know, I don't think I personally would've had a problem with them going back to the 1956 flag--it's certainly better-looking than that "let's please everydamnbody" monstrosity that they came up with. But really, what's got people up in arms, as much as removing the St. Andrews Cross itself, was the way in which it was done.

Barnes rammed this through almost like a Congressional pay raise--suddenly, without warning, and without enough public knowledge. He didn't want a referendum. Even though Georgia has been "Yankeefied" to the point where a referendum to change the flag might well pass, he didn't want to take the risk of a Mississippi. He didn't have enough trust in his own people to let them vote on the state flag.

Sometimes I wish there was a way that you guys over across the Savannah could carve metro Atlanta out and give 'em their own state, then move the state capital down to Savannah or Macon and let the rest of Georgia run itself without a couple million "damnyankees" (as Stand Watie calls 'em) clogging up the works. :)

}:-)4

When we were in the deep south not long ago we saw those flags flying over the capitols. And how are black Americans in those cities supposed to feel about it? It was an oppresive feeling to us who were just passing through.

Really? Exactly how long ago was that? It must not have been in the last two years, as that is when the last one over a state capitol came down in South Carolina.

Granted, there are several confederate monuments at our state capitols including some with flags on them. Is this what you saw, and if so may I ask what you believe to be inappropriate about it?

As for your question, exactly how and in what way were you "oppressed" by a piece of cloth? Did it attack you or perhaps fall on your face, momentarily threatening suffocation? Did the wind blow it in such a manner as to give the illusion of a "mean face" appearing on it? Or is this just another case of hypersensitive fluff being promoted by a believer in some unnamed unwritten and completely absurd "right" to not be offended by anything he sees

Once again, read the Georgia Senate's own account into the 1956 change. If anyone would know what happened during the 1956 General Assembly, it would be the Georgia Senate, wouldn't it?

Again, in order to swallow this tripe about the 1956 flag being a memorial to the Confederacy, you have to not only disregard the Georgia Senate's own account, but the words of the politicians of the time and the fact that the pre-1956 flag was already a memorial to the Confederacy which was designed by a Confederate officer.

The link you listed is from the 2000 General Assembly, many of whom wouldnt know a snake if it jumped up and bit 'em. Despite their insistence to the contrary, the members of the 2000 General Assembly that made the report started with a foregone conclusion and argued fallaciously to 'prove' their point. They argued that the Confederate Battle Emblem on the Mississippi flag werent racist because it was placed their before such connotations were attached to the flag. They said that the connotation of the flag had changed by the time the Georgia General Assembly placed the emblem on the Georgia flag and cited the Dixiecrat revolt as a major source of the change in this connotation. They went so far as to quote dixiecrats that said the flag sent a clear message. The problem is that the current legislature misconstrues that message as one of racism. The true message of the battle flag when it flew in the Revolution of 1861, when it was used by the Dixiecrats, when it was placed on the Georgia flag in 1956, and today is resistance to federal tyranny and support for limited constituted government. It supports State's rights and signifies the South's willingness to fight such tyranny. The 2000 general assembly misconstrued this message based on their biased view of the flag before the research started. Their bias is obvious to all with a reasonable grasp of Southern history. Hell, they refer to the first battle of Mannassas as the Battle of Bull Run. It should be obvious that government schools and media have done the job of their yankee propoganda masters.

Their are alot of people who know better than the current general assembly. The ones who new best were the ones who passed the flag change back in 1956 and specifically, the man that designed the 1956 flag. They both said and continue to say that it was desingned as a memorial to the Confederacy and the ideals of State's rights.

When I was in the federal Navy, people used to always come by and say, why do you fly your flag(one of the few personal items we were allowed to display was a State flag). They said people from Georgia and Texas always fly their State flags. Nobody else does. Sadly, with the change of the State flag we have gone from a flag that most took pride in to one that nobody takes pride in. Even the carpetbagger and scalawag sellouts in Atlanta that passed the flag change dont fly that flag.

Despite their insistence to the contrary, the members of the 2000 General Assembly that made the report started with a foregone conclusion and argued fallaciously to 'prove' their point.

Unfortunately for you, the report is thoroughly researched and impeccably referenced. It goes into agonizing details of the General Assembly of 1956 and provides ample contemporary evidence that the flag was changed in 1956 in support of segregation, rather than the Confederacy. Short of the minutes of the debate, which do not exist, it is the most accurate document we have for the reasons behind the 1956 change.

Of course, even if you ignore all evidence to the contrary and persist in the belief that the pre-1956 flag was changed to honor Confederate veterans, you still have to explain why the tradition-minded 1956 General Assembly threw out a flag that was not only based on the CSA national flag, but was designed by an actual CSA officer. Moreover, they did this over the objections of the UDC and other Confederate organizations. "They made the change strictly against the wishes of UDC chapters from the states that form our organization," said Mrs. Forrest E. Kibler, legislative chairman of the Georgia UDC. She also pointed out that "eighteen different patriotic (i.e. Confederate heritage)organizations in Georgia had asked the legislature not to make the change." Reasons ran the gamut from the fact that the battle flag belonged to all the Confederate states (placing it on the Georgia flag would cause strife), to its symbolizing a step backward toward sectionalism and prejudice, to protestation against any use of the battle flag except in commemoration of the Confederacy."

When I was a kid, the grownups seemed to want to hang Warren, and a few hundred politicians as well. Nowadays, being passionate enough about liberty and the rule of law to even think of impeaching the traitors wil get you labeled an extremist nutjob.

Our country is becoming a pansified place to live. Even the passion shown by conservatives when Reagan was running the first time, as watered down and muted as that was in comparison to theway they talked when Goldwater ran, seems like an uproar comapred to today's talk from "conservatives".

Probably, they'll round up all the old rowdies like me and lock our asses in a home somewhere so they can pretend to be the conservatives and will look good compared to the democrats. Oh well. This didn't figure to last much longer anyway, did it? ;-)

Just trying to help. I empathize with you, and I am not making any accusations; I am merely speaking of perceptions. Case in point, I work with a very conservative, very religious 38-year-old black woman from North Carolina. She and I are very much in agreement on many issues, particularly on race hustlers like Je$$e and $harpton, but she has great animosity for the CBF because of her personal experiences growing up in the South with people who misappropriated your symbol. And, believe me, this woman is vehemently opposed to the race victim mentality.

The deck is most definitely stacked against you because of the liberal media. Of course you are "not responsible for the ignorance of others," but I was merely alerting you to what you guys may want to address in the wider world. You might want to start using the liberals' own games against them, e.g., protesting every time a white Southerner flying the CBF is negatively stereotyped in a movie, or -- more far reaching -- howling about how textbooks misrepresent the South in references to the Civil War.

BTW, there was an excellent article in the Washington Times
last Saturday about a black Virginia man who is in the CSA. I am not a Civil War scholar, so I got to learn a bit about the CSA.

As for your question about defining "racism," yes, that is a term that gets used by so-called black leaders as a weapon on anyone that disagrees with them. (The good part about that, I think, is that they have used it so often that it is steadily losing its potency.) However, I think that reasonable people can certainly agree that the KKK is a group of racists.

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.

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

The documentation in the 2000 reports documents unrelated facts and then speculates that these facts helped the 1956 legislators make their decision. For example, they document the use of the 'Battle Flag' by the Dixiecrats, but they assume that this was done to promote racism(a false assumpition), and they further assume that the 1956 legislatures incorporated the design into the Georgia flag because of the Dixiecrats(another unfounded assumption.) The report is not a scholarly work but a propoganda piece.

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