Even while the war was going on,
his book relates, the battle flag began supplanting the original national flag
(the so-called Stars and Bars) as Southerners' preferred emblem of their cause.
Coski's research supports some of the flag defenders' arguments. He documents
that Confederate heritage groups like the SCV have a long history of condemning
hate groups like the Klan.
"Flag defenders ask, not unfairly, why do we allow the Klan to define the
Confederate flag?" he said.
Also, such hate groups have been as likely to wave the American flag as the
Confederate one, if not more so. "Not until the 1930s or '40s did the Klan begin
to use (the Confederate flag) in a systematic, ritualistic way," Coski said.
Slavery existed under the U.S. flag -- and was sanctioned by the U.S.
Constitution -- far longer than it was under the Confederacy, the heritage
groups also note.
On the other hand, black Americans who are repelled by Confederate symbolism
also have ample historical justification for their feelings, Coski said.
"Civil rights leaders came to view the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism,"
he wrote, "because they encountered it in situations in which white people
intended it as a symbol of racism."
In the years following the Civil War, the flag was an emblem for many
Southerners of "The Lost Cause," which conceded slavery was dead but still
asserted white supremacy, the book says. In the 20th century, those fighting for
black people's rights often saw it in the hands of their opponents.
The most important period in the flag's post-Civil War history was the late
1940s and the 1950s, according to Coski. It was a time when the Confederate flag
leaped back into the national consciousness, in contradictory ways.
First, the flag re-entered politics when it spontaneously became the symbol of
the 1948 "Dixiecrats," the Southern Democrats who broke with the national party
over President Harry Truman's support of federal civil rights legislation. "When
the federal government challenged the status quo in the South, Southerners
reached for the symbolism of their grandfathers," Coski said.
Shortly after, an odd "flag fad" sprang up. All sorts of people -- even some
Northerners -- began flying the flag or using it as a decorative element.
College students were at the forefront of the fad. The battle flag became the
unofficial emblem of the University of Mississippi. University of Virginia
students waved it at football games when the visiting team was from up North.
Southern U.S. troops in the Korean War put the flag on their tents, jeeps and
trucks. (Coski quoted one officer's facetious comment that, after all, they were
fighting for South Korea.) Some National Guard units in Southern states included
it in their official insignia.
The flag's faddishness was such that it upset Confederate heritage supporters,
who decried its "perverted" appearance as decoration on clothing, towels,
knickknacks and the like. This, said Coski, "tells us that people were
unaccustomed to widespread display of the flag."
The flag, he wrote, "took on new identities as a logo for the South and a symbol
of rebelliousness that had national currency and appeal." It was on its way to
becoming a pop-culture prop, available for use by Southern rock bands, NASCAR in
its early days, and on the roof of that Dodge Charger driven by those good ol'
boys, the Dukes of Hazzard.
Rediscovering the 1950s flag fad, Coski said, was the biggest surprise in his
research.
Nowadays, those who would fly the Confederate flag are on the defensive. White
Southerners had built a landscape of Confederate memorials for themselves, Coski
said; "that has changed in the last couple of decades, because people who had no
voice (black Southerners) now had a voice."
Those flag foes, often with official support, have been engaged in frequent
struggle with Confederate heritage groups over where, if anyplace, the flag
should be allowed in public.
Coski's book recounts several of these incidents that took place in Virginia:
Then-Gov. Doug Wilder ordering the removal in 1992 of a battle-flag insignia of
a Virginia Air National Guard unit; the arguments over the flag flying at
Danville's city-owned "Last Capital of the Confederacy"; and the legal battle
over the SCV license plate.
Flag supporters have lost enough of these battles that they now complain of
being the victims of persecution.
Must these "flag flaps" continue indefinitely? Can there be any compromise, or
at least a truce, between those who preserve the Confederacy's memory and those
who condemn it?
Coski thinks so. But it won't be easy.
In the last chapter of his book, he offers a suggestion. First, people on both
sides need to realize that just because the flag has a certain meaning for them,
it doesn't necessarily mean the same to other people.
"Critics (of the flag) need to make a distinction between a memorial parade and
a Klan rally. Do not give in to your emotions and attack every time you see a
Confederate flag."
For their part, Confederate heritage groups should grant that their flag does
not belong anywhere where it implies sovereignty, such as part of a state flag.
They should be free to display the battle flag in memorial observances and
historical displays, but censure its more frivolous uses, just as they condemn
its "defilement" by hate groups.
"Those who truly regard the battle flag as a
sacred war memorial for Confederate ancestors should oppose its use on T-shirts,
baseball caps, and other popular-culture items that trivialize its meaning,"
Coski wrote.
The Senate campaign aside, it's been a quiet year in Virginia with few "flag
flaps."
"I don't know whether we're achieving an understanding, or that people are
exhausted by it," Coski says.