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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."

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.