Summer reading list. Send us your choices at booktv is our twitter handle. Post on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv or send an email to booktv cspan. Org. What is on your Summer Reading list, booktv wants to know. Booktv covered a book shoot after it was called the confederate battle flag a historian at the American Civil War museum in richmond. Ten years ago, what has changed with regard attitudes on the confederate battle flag in the last ten years. The question is how much change in the last ten days . Met has been the remarkable shift in attitudes or a remarkable period for the history of the battle flag as an object of discussion. Ten years ago when the book came out still fresh some of the controversies that occurred in states like alabama and South Carolina where compromises had been reached to retire flags, flags from the capital of those two states to other positions on the Capitol Grounds and they were contextualized with historical displays by confederate monuments in South Carolina and flag display explicitly historical on the old Capitol Grounds in alabama and those talking about removing those. The sale of battle flags and battle flag memorabilia call ma all kind of largescale markets, addressed the question of the use of the battle flag on license plates issued by federal states to the sons of confederate veterans. To that point the lower level Appellate Courts upheld the presence of the flag on license plates and and last week, the u. S. Supreme court designated at as official government speech and had the right to regulate presence on the flag and what happened in the last week, the evolution of opinion or change of opinion as a result of murders, church and South Carolina influence opinion further. It has been a very eventful week. All these things relevant to the things i wrote about ten years ago. Is the reaction to the battle flag as a historian, deal feel that is a reaction to the battle flag that is legitimate . Guest as a historian, the angle of my book the angle of the exhibit what the museum did ten years before has always been to try to provide background and prospective, not to recommend to anyone what they think or do about it but based on the premise that in order to be an intelligent participant in the discussion, it would behoove you to understand the full history of the Confederate Flag, history not only as the confederate symbol during the war but how it has been used for continues to be used and therefore the perceptions and meanings of that use creates and generates and studied the history and decide what to do, i see this as what is happening today as a continuation of a longterm process. A kind of generic process in any culture of the discussion about what does or does not belong in public spaces in our symbolic landscape and how we go about deciding it, who participates and how we decide that. I dont try to recommend, but to the observer and to think about the interest of the story, and their own part of the story. Ones own viewpoint what history is relevant here and what it means to me and generalize to some profound single capital t truth about the meaning of the flag and i think it belongs where it belongs and realize from a commonsense standpoint lot of other people involved in this discussion they dont share your perspective why it was viewed to understand why they do or do not spend its stand share your perspective. Host john coski is his story of the American Civil War museum and author of the confederate battle flag americas most embattled emblem. Booktv coverage john coski ten years ago on his book and we want to show that to you now. In recent years the confederate battle flag has become as much a news item as a historic artifact. Intense public debate over this provocative image has polarized americans about its meaning. It is viewed with a widest range of demotions, pride, fear, anger, nostalgia, discussed. You can hardly pick up on newspaper without reading about some incidents involving the Confederate Flag. Case in point when the controversy last week in a nearby County School about students wearing confederate symbols. That is the subject many years after the civil war, it clearly needs a cool dispassionate perspective to be understood is that is what our program is about today because our speaker has written the definitive account. His book the confederate battle flag americas most embattled emblem tells the story of the flag from its creation during the civil war to the present day. The author will suggest how this symbol which has stirred so many conflicting emotions in so many people might provide americans with the Common Ground of a shared and complex history and a chance to buy the book in the museum versus the lecture. John coski was born in california but he likes to say he became a naturalized va citizen at 83. He did undergraduate work at Mary Washington college and a masters and ph. D. From william and mary. He is the author of several books, can include an account of the army of the potomac at Berkeley Plantation and one about the james river squadron. John coski has worked at several civil war sites. And Mary Washington. Since 1988, in the library and research. For any historian interested in the collection at the museum of the confederacy. From personal experience i would like to take this public opportunity to thank him for his help with research on my book. On as encyclopedic knowledge on the civil war and generally has researchers. You can see results in the acknowledgements section of virtually every book published on the civil war. Every book on the war that touches on virginia bears the thank you to john for his advice and counsel. Please welcome a good friend of the Virginia Historical society and many of us in the hall today, dr. John coski who will speak to was on his latest book the confederate battle flag americas most embattled emblem. [applause] thank you all very much for inviting me. How is the sound here . Am i audible to all of you in the back of the room if i speak like this . As nelson said i have been part of the Historical Society family for many years. My wife and i are members of the Historical Society and have been for 14 years and spent many days sitting out where you all are now listening to lectures so is a real honor to be here. I feel like i have finally made it. The Historical Society has been for many decades has been the measure of good scholarship in the state of virginia. Nelson may not remember 20 years ago i submitted an article for the virginia magazine of history and biography. He didnt exactly reject it but sent it back with some helpful suggestion on how to revise it. I am still thinking about the revisions. This opportunity to speak gives me an opportunity to rectify terrible oversight. Nelson mentioned his acknowledgments in the book and i know how flattering it is to be mentioned. I rose acknowledgments in this book that read like a bad Academy Award acceptance speech, went on and on and failed to thank the Virginia Historical society for the research i did here and a couple key collections and also want to thank dr. Brian for a loan and a photograph to the research. And the library for help in researching this book and many other projects over the years and by thanking you all here in front of the Television Cameras and several hundred people i am reaching far more people than i would have divided in the pages of the book. I dont feel so bad after all. The topic of the book and of the talk is much about Current Events as it is about history. It is both. You will find it in some major bookstores under current affairs. Because of that passion that surrounds everything nelson described, mikey diss passion which is real, what does the flag mean to you . Some tongue in cheek but completely joy. What does the flag mean to me . It means 12 years of work working on the book. That is what it means to me. That is the personal association it has there wracking my brain and thinking back a couple decades, there are encounters with the flag that perhaps shaped my perception. They all go back a ways but are worth repeating. I was a typical civil war nerd in tidewater, va. And i do what we all do at some point when we get our drivers license, got into a car with my best friend and drove in southern virginia to the Civil War Battlefield from fredericksburg, manassas, up the valley, back home by appomattox and st. Petersburg, and tie it to the aerial of my 1970 toyota and confederate battle flag, the blue cross flag. And another ten years or so. A yearandahalf later, a good country boy had on the wall inside wall of our dormitory a confederate battle flag, 3 x 5 feet or so. A good southern boy and that is his way of saying he was a good southern boy. And complaining the flagman racism and slavery, how dare we have this flag on our wall . John beg to differ and affected their no further incidents i recall the rest of the semester. A yearandahalf after that roseanna and i were invited to appoint party in the late 70s. And quite fit the image, no peer things anywhere on my body, something to do with rebellion. I took one of my tshirts and tore it and got a confederate battle flag and carried it or attached it, cant remember which but it spoke to rebellion. Within the space of three years, these encounters in a sense i had witnessed or professed several different contexts and meetings of the flag. The south and the civil war it means the confederacy, it means the south according to my roommate, it means recess and and slavery according to our friend, it means rebellion, a symbolic middle finger of the punk rockers of 1990, it means all of the above. I became acquainted with various meanings when i was in college before i made this the subject of an intense study. I dont think it influence the but perhaps it did. When i came to a museum in 1988 those headlines nelson referred to about what the headline writers refers to as flag flaps were going strong. You really couldnt read a newspaper without reading something about a controversy at the local level, state level or national level. This was the beginning of this wave of controversy. At a lower level occurring even today. At the museum we decided to provide a service by doing an exhibit about the history of the flag to provide background and perspective. What do people need to know to understand the controversy is occurring about the flag, to give it in objective and unbiased fashion as possible background and perspective to allow people to better understand the issues of the day, various perspectives and means attached to the flag over 140 years 130 years then, of the flags life. The exhibit am battle emblem ran two years and traveled to South Carolina. It was such a fascinating topic that i continued research on my own hook from the mid 1990s until the book came out earlier this year. What i would like to do for a little while is to give you what is necessarily a broad overview, very Broad Strokes about some of the points, i suspect there will be some questions too as i locate abroad points in the question and answer period because this is an overview. We had a few slides. I think i can get this right. There you go. A few click slides to make points about the historical evolution of the battle flag. Start with some definitions here because this flag has become known as the Confederate Flag. Most of the know it was not the confederate battle flag or the Confederate Flag. What i am talking about when i say the Confederate Flag or confederate battle flag i am oversimplifying by necessity. Any variation of this flag, the red background, blue cross with white stars, the cross was technically a self here, heralded device, not a cross that known as the southern cross, in fused with all kinds of religious significance which is ironic because the man who designed it and promoted it wanted it to be a nonsectarian, nonreligious symbol. He turned the cross from the upper right Georgian Cross to the st. Andrews cross and made a heralded device so that it wouldnt at the request of the Jewish Community of South Carolina, charleston which requested the National Flag of the confederacy not have a religious device on it. This was first promoted as the National Flag of the confederacy in 1861. As a lot of you know there are all kinds of options of size and shape and details. This looks like what people referred to as the naval jack. In fact it is the army of tennessee pattern battle flag for those keeping score, that was used in late 1860s 36465. Is not a naval back at all but these variations and there are so many of them are important to the history of the flag during wartime but this important history of the flag as a symbol over the 140 years of its life which is my purview in the book and in this talk so when i referred to the battle flag i am referring to this flag in whatever size, shape and pattern. One thing this flag is not to take nothing away from this lecture, realize this flag is not the stars and bars. This is the stars and bars. I know it is tempting to call the other stars and bars because it rolls off of the tongue and there are stars and bars but this is the flag that was known as the stars and bars and known as the first National Flag of the confederacy adopted in march of 1861. It resembles basically the stars and stripes. That is the liver was delivered and is extremely important for understanding the history of the Confederate Flag as a whole and the importance of the confederate battle flag as southerners, white southerners in 1861 did not consider themselves to be rejecting the old union. They were among the most patriotic of americans in the antebellum years and they said let the northerners and lincoln government have their foolish kinky doodle but let us keep the flag of the beloved old united states, the old union. The suggestion of a flag the close and resemble the stars and stripes was very deliberate and in a sense was a manifestation of southern airs wean themselves away from the symbols of the once united nation, but weaning is the critical word here. This flag was the National Flag and also employed on the battlefield by armies of the confederacy in the first months of the board. The flag that was meant to be distinctive and easily seen and identified on a battlefield that resembled so closely the flag of the opposing army would create some problems and indeed it did. There were incidents of friendly fire the first battle of manassas and other certainly it early civil war battles and the confederate generals throughout the south to adopt other patterns a barrel from patterns that distinctive and would serve better more effectively as battle flags and that is the origin of this. This is an example, classic example of the army of Northern Virginia pattern battle flag from the museum of the confederacys collection. The largest in existence if you havent come to see it please do. The square pattern as opposed the rectangular one was used by what became robbery bes army in regina and associated closely with lees army. The first issues were caught in bentinck. Being associated with the most Successful Army of the confederacy, the one that kept alive made it an important symbol to the confederate people as a whole. More importantly really the Flags Association with soldiers a battle Flags Association with soldiers who marched, fought and died under it was important to one distending why people revere this flag today, why so many people review the symbol because it was consecrated by the soldiers and the blood of the soldiers and so closely associated with the soldiers. If you want to understand the passion put a flag that exists today you must understand that association but is it fair to say that is the end of the story . That this flag was only the flag of the soldier . It really isnt true. It would be nice if people began to write after in the war that this was the flag of the soldiers aged not be confused by the flag of the nation or one what might think about the confederacy, but again only if you believe the confederacy is so closely associated with slavery. Leave the battle flag out of it. That would be a nice way to resolve differences if it were true. Is not true. Here is the second National Flag of the confederacy adopted in may at the king 63 and the story behind this is the first National Flag the stars and bars became unpopular when rejected by the opinion makers of the south but the same reason it was adopted in the first place, it resembled the stars and stripes, the stars and bars as i mentioned earlier was the flag by which southerners been themselves off of the symbols of the united states. As their sense of independence group, battles became more intense and lives were lost and southerners began to think of themselves as confederates they needed a symbol of what headline writers referred to as mature independence rather than confirmed independence. When the debate began in spring of 1863 to adopt a new National Flag the only pattern that was discussed was the battle flag so closely associated with the soldier and the army of Northern Virginia. There was even a movement to make a first flag the oblong battle flag into the National Flag of the confederacy. Instead what they did was emblazoned it on a field of white. The only motif on the National Flag of the confederacy that opted in 1863 which served into a vertical red bar on the police end in the last months of the war. By the end of the war 1863 that pattern blue cross on the redfields was enormously important symbol for the confederate soldier but also for the confederate nation and all the things the nation stood for. If flag had been for a once and for all the 1865 as father ryan publicly advised the flag would probably be controversial to this day because of the inevitable association between the confederacy and slavery and because the confederacy was after all the most important effort to change the nature of the union, to break up the union and would be controversial in our history and a symbol the primary nationalist symbol of the confederacy bound to be controversial. More importantly if it had been furl the 1865 i would be shutting up about now. But instead i am going to turn the slide off and go on a bit because as we know the Confederate Flag was not furls in 1865 once and for all. In says it lived on as a disembodied symbol disembodied from the confederate soldier and a confederate cause and confederate nation, lived on to be used and abused in other contextss in future years as a symbol. Having said that, for 75 years or so after the end of the civil war the flag was widely used in Southern Society, widely seen in Southern Society but in limited ways, very different from what we have gotten used to in our own lifetime. More or less with some important exceptions it was restricted to use in a memorial historical way, it was frequently used on a southern landscape and public ritual in monument dedication like human battle flags at the lee monument to the 1907 review of the veterans reunion in 1907, monument dedication, memorial the rituals and celebrations, meetings of the daughters of the confederacy, united confederate veterans but limited pretty much to those understandable outgrowths of the confederacy itself but nevertheless keeping the flag all live as part of the mans day. Something happened between the 1930s and 1940s in particular, transform the flag and proliferated it. It continued then and continues now to the of Popular Culture some land in the middle third or so, trying to figure out how and when and why that happened and to make a long story short, it seems to happen in the hands of College Students, so many things do. Agents of change, College Students began waving the flag not to mean the confederacy but to me in the south or school spirit. There was a fine article in the virginia magazine a couple years ago about the flag that you may have read the university of virginia student predate the university of mississippi, using the flag of the south, when they went north, what better symbol, it was that kind of thing. And southern Board Service wanted some talisman. And southerners in the chilean of lee and jackson and the battle flag, and why it became a Popular Culture symbol. As the taboo it wore off as generations past had perilously used simple, and that kind broke out in the late 40s and 50s. Enough to make headlines newsweek and time and life magazine, what is going on here . It was not just the southern thing. Why are the descendants of the men fought against the confederacy now flying the flags everywhere, raising it over the boston state house. There is some hint of ideological use but most people conclude it was just a fad like coonskin caps and hula hoops and the other fads of the host 50s but resulted in the creation of the material culture that we still see today. Your baseball caps tshirts, bikinis, everything emblazoned with the battle flag, Popular Culture use of the flag that had the effect over time of trivializing it and also the rebellious streak, the rebellious connotation i alluded to earlier, symbolic middle finger of Hank Williams jr. Motorcycle riders with long beards emblazoned, those are the tee shirts many people wear today. Not that all the merged in 1950s and has given us this alternative dukes of hazzard cultural use of the flag. At the same time the proliferation of the flag brought a more sinister kind of use beginning in the late 30s and 40s, but more pronounced in 1948 when the Southern States rights party, the Dixiecrat Party gathered at the auditorium in birmingham alabama for a convention after they nominated Strom Thurmond for president , rallied, cameras all over the worlds published his images of the Dixiecrat Convention with Confederate Flags and pictures of robert e. Lee being waved. If you look closely i find it very interesting that the people waving those flags were college kids because they made up a very large share of the delegates to the convention in 1948. That is how the flag was introduced or reintroduce perhaps into the political arena in 1948 and became part of the campaign, not officially but by a party supporters. It. In the 1860s that blue cross became the primary National Symbol of white southerners trying to prevent the federal government from interfearing with their way of life. That is slavery. In the 1940s when the federal government once again in the form of the civil rights acts and the civil rights platform of the Democratic Convention and Democratic Party started one again to scombeer fear with the southern way of life, that is segregation for whatever reason people felt the confederate battle flag was a logical symbol to indicate their disday for and resistance to the federal government. That continued in the following years and more p after the brown decision of 19534, that mandated the desegregation of schools. It was then that the Klu Klux Klan began to use the flag much more frequently than in the preceding decades which had gist been introduced in the early 1940s but the klan began the wide use of the flag after 18954 and so did ordinary southerners. Students and parents at rallies and resistance marches all over the south carrying Confederate Flags because they believed for whatever reason that flag spoke to their resistance. Wasnt something that africanamericans imagined. White people deliberately and purposely used that flag to indicate their opposition to integration, and doesnt matter whether that opposition was based on states rights or white supremacy. The result was the same. They were opposing civil rights for africanamericans, and africanamericans had ever reason to believe it was flag that indicated a threat to their basic rights to their perceived interests at the very least. And that has become one over the master images of the flag in our own time. You want to understand why africanamericans feel threatened by the flag you. Dont need to go back to the civil war. Need only go back to the 1950seds and of 0s and pel people deliberatedly used that flag. In the 1950s and 60s there was a reaction to all of this. This new use of the flag, whether on shot glasses and bikinis and klan rallies. In the 18940s africanamericans back to speak out against it, as a symbol not of racism but of disunity and royalty. Their worry about it being a symbol of racism became in the 60s. The people who spoke out most loudly against it was the heritage groups. They more or less owned the symbol and its meaning before world war ii. What they believed it meant it what is meanters more or less. With the prolive of the flag maintain the lost control of its meaning and they were keenly aware of that, and tried to reverse it. Four states passed laws in late 1950s and early 18960s punishing desecration of the flag socalled. Virginia passed a resolution in 1970. Put this proved to be impossible to reverse that trend. And i devote a whole chapter to this. Its fascinating thing. We hear that no one stood up and complained about the use of the flag by the klan or use of the flag october bikinis. They did. We all know what has come since. In the 60s, 70s, to our own die the history of the flag has been largely a history of public controversy. A lot of people with short memories believe that gang in the 1980s when the naacp passed a resolution trying bring down the flag from the state houses in South Carolina, alabama, and on the flags of georgia and mississippi and that certainly did usher in an era of activism of trying to remove the flag from public symbolism and even Public Places but these are just echos of controversy that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. So were kind of in a second wave of controversy. The last third of the book is devoted to dissecting and analyzing these controversies and how they echo the earlier history of the flag. Now, ideally i would wrap it up by pontificating on what history teaches us, look at the history of the flag, and ideally objectively, wed mange weed make conclusions. Without question the highlight dictates this is what we should do with the flag. But i think yall know it isnt that easy. Theres no clear answer about what we should do or what the flag means. If anything in fact what hoyt teaches us is there are a lot of different meanings of the flag. Theres no single meaning. The perceptions people have of the flag are based in reality in use over time, particularly since 1865. What it suggests to us is that if we want to understood thats what we should be doing understand why people think differently from us. We must look at the whole history of the flag and not simply pick and choose those chapters, those facets, that serve my purpose my perception of what the flag means. You have to look at it all. Some people would suggest that the only period of the flags history we need to examine is 18611865. The confederate soldier defined the flag once and for off. Arguably that is true for those pieces of silk and wool bunting in our checks and other collections. Those flags that actually carried. But im not sure how strong the argument is the Confederate Flag defined the pieces 0 cotton made in new jersey and in 19 early 1900s waved by students at Football Games or waved by segregationists in pock School Rallies in the in public School Rallies. How many con fed that soldiers defined the flags on shot glasses and beach towels and bikinis, the confederate soldier did not define those. He did not define those flags that come come up in controversy today, on tshirts. A lot of them that are not exactly the reverend shall type, either or the flags over the capitols of South Carolina or alabama for that matter. Those were defined by other people in other contexts and it behooves us to understand those people. Its equally true we should notally and cannot historically or ethically to be fair, allow the Klu Klux Klan define the flag. Some people say the klan uses the flag. Thats all i need to know. No thats not all you need to. No why allow a justify marginalized group to define a symbol that means so many Different Things to so many more people. It is equally invalid to say the klan defined the flag. You have to lack another it all. Hoyt will not help us out of this. Trying to understand the meaning of the flag and what should be done with i it is a matter not just of history. Its a manner of manners, of civility of mutual tolerance and mutual respect. Theres an ethical principle involved here and the best statement of the ethical principle, one i have elevated in the conclusion of the book, came from an aclu lawyer addressing a School Assembly in durham, north carolina, held as a result of an out of Court Settlement from the temperature tshirts and the said if your need to express pride in your Southern Heritage is worth hugging those that phonedded too what you must but at least try to see what why the message you intend to send is not the one received. Those who are offended by the flag into see that the con get recall flag means many Different Things to many different people. Recognize the flag has significant beyond racism. Understand the message you receive may not be the message the person displaying it intends to send. If my book can help establish a kind of Historical Foundation for realizing this ethical principle, i would be very happy. Let me conclude by expanding on that point. I think this book will about successful because it does a couple of things. If it helps people transcends their union personal feelingings, own preconceptions what the flag means theres a distinction to between what it means to you personally and what it means generally. Similarly, if it can help to elevate the discussion above this eitheror win or lose situation which people dont even true to understand what the other thinks and believes about the flag, it will succeed if it helps people recognize the difference between a flag in a context that acknowledges the fact of history of whatever history, versus a flag that is celebrating or promoting a particular view of history whatever that view is, a view that offer times distorts or at least is a distortion or at least an exclusive view of history, and i especially be successful if it helps people have a more sophisticated view of the history of flag. We tend to reduce history to bumper stickers and slogans. It takes time and more than sound bites. It takes work but its unavoidable. We cannot have a simplistic hoyt. We know the history is complex and ambiguous. All history is complex and ambiguous, and i would like to extend this to every the study of history in general but specific to the battle flag, because its as much an issue of Current Events as it is of history, more sophisticated view of history would be a contributing not only to good history but i think also to good citizenship. Thank you all very much for your attention. [applause] as i understand the drill to ask questions you have to come forward the microphone. Which usually is quite the deterrent, isnt it . On the origin of the battle flag with the cross of st. Andrew did it derive in any fashion from the cross of st. Andrew . Because you can day the cross of st. Andrew narrow the field and fill it with red and put stars in it and it could have hey symbolism that the scots were a losing group in a sense to the british and were trying to rally. Any moment to that suggestion . Actually, no. The cross of st. Andrew, the st. Andrew martyred a. D. 69, the patron saint of scotland so the cross was very important to this celtic culture that many believe is a strong part of southern culture. Theres been a lot of writing about that. The cross is not all that strong in antebellum south i can tell. A lot of people made that into a cross of st. Andrews so now its almost irreversible to convince people i wasnt intended to be a cross of st. Andrew and i refer to it in that short havened in the book. But it was intended by miles the South Carolina congressman. So it was not done at the time in 1861 or 1863 consciously to echo the cross of st. Andrew, but the weight of time has in a sense made it into that, and there is suggestions, for example, that the flag of alabama or the flag of florida which the state flags of those two states are now simply a red cross flag on a white field, and florida has the state seal over it. Those in a sense are also harkening back to the confederate battle flag and the cross of st. Andrew. The people have weighted it down with that perception, and that perception has become a new reality, but if you clear away if youre a strict constructionity and you get back to what miles intended it did not have anything to do with the cross of st. Andrew or the scottish flag. Thank you for a very fine talk. It certainly enlightened me on a number of points. But while your book gives us many different viewpoints of the flag im not sure that middle school and high School Students will have read that or not likely to have read that when they wear to school theyre con federal emblem flag on their tshirts jeans and what have you. Therefore, would you disagree with the school board who would ban such emblems because theyre disruptive to the learning process or would you say, wait a minute what would you do . Good question. Im neither a teacher nor a parent so my qualifications to this are minimal i suppose. Theres a chapter devoted to Public School controversies and as the critical element eve you said typically true in the 1960s and 1970s when many students, white students in the newly integrated schools were using battle flags to indicate disfavor for the integration, if there were patterns like that in the past and that led to disruption or could lead to disruption the flag bans that schools passed were upheld. If the school had no history of any kind of disruption based on the flag or racial tension and simply a preemptive strike the courts would find for the students challenging flag bans. It seems to me, again with a caveat that im not a parent or a teacher that to simply ban something on the face of it is an abdication of responsibility for educating people. I would like theres opportunities for discussion like the quote i read from bill simpson at the School Assembly to make students better able to understand the differences in context for the display of the flag, to develop a sense of tolerance, i dont think that if all disruptive, potentially disruptive symbols are banned before anything even happens that what you are doing is disabling students from learning distinctions, the kinds of distinctions that i think are necessary to reach consensus on larger issues in a larger society. To understand, as i quote myself in the book, people need to understand the difference between a memorial day parade a a klan march when you judge the context of the flag. Any kind of reasonable compromise has to be based on reading contexts better than we do. Asking a lot of all people. Sometimes it means taking down a flag because it is threatening or does suggest a kind of public governmental sanction of a neoconfederate history. Other times were asking africanamericans to say come on, get a grip, its not threatening when its in a he is me tear over confederate graves. Askg f a were asking compromise of various people to swallow your own sense of what the flag means to you in order to reach a compromise point and seems to me it would be good to get that started early in the school so students could become accustomed to having to look a little more deeply at symbols and ask what they mean. While being sensitive to real disruption if there has been youll see in the book, instances which the flag was at the center of controversies that spilled outout into the streets pensacola and chattanooga. Clearly maintaining the learnings environment is critical but should be wiggle room to help students learn the more sew fuss it sophies it indicate view. If i could make an observation, the commercialization of that sim bowl variations on that theme obviously its very colorful, its primary colors. If you have a basic computer, you can turn out all sorts of tshirts bumper stickers, hat bands and so forth. On one hadnt seems to be such a great proliferation commercially of that symbol, im also struck by the fact that you dont see the actual flag itself flown in as many distant places as one once did. You mentioned world war ii, and southernborn soldiers flying the battle flag on oak okinawa. Ive seen famous pictures of the flag on iwo jima. I saw it on many fire bases in vietnam. I think its perhaps important to note that despite the fact that several large combat units fighting in iraq today come directly from the deep south the old south mississippi alabama, florida, South CarolinaNational Guardsman who are walking the streets of baghdad, and other spots in iraq. You dont see the display of the battle flag on tops of bunkers the way you did in vietnam. And so i think with a Younger Group of service men some of that i would hope, consideration of the soldiers standing next to them may be coming to the fore. I received several digital images from iraq, one man standing next to a large chalk drawing of Saddam Hussein on top of a tank with a battle flag. But its not as common and getting a firm read on exactly how much the army is cracking down on that, the service is cracking down, whether today or in the 50s. It was discouraged officially in the 1950s and only when it became a headline did the men have to give it up. But the exact tolerance the degree of tolerance of the flag inside the military, whether world what are 2 or today its kind of fuzzy never been able to really get a good grip on that. Im sure a lot of it is it the army is so largely africanamerican now. Even in vietnam there was an incident in april of 1968, right after the murder of Martin Luther king in which the Georgia State flag was temporarily banned after there were fears of race riots in vietnam after the news spread of the killing of Martin Luther king, and the georgia flag which featured the battle emblem was a favorite among many of the soldiers. Two questions first off what as salteer. The x and im not the exact definition im not sure but its a device family crests and the like, and that diagonal x is defined at a salteer as opposed to religious symbolism. I notice the Confederate Flag is not flying over the chapel. The chapel flyings the battle flagg and the second National Flag when its open, when its being staffed by members of the lee jackson camp, so in a sense its a signal to you its open for visitation when the flags are there. Im speaking from the point of view as a teacher and a parent. We have gone through the controversy of the Confederate Flag and students wearing them. Has it changed from a racial tone and everything to more of a tone of just being a symbol of being country or being a redneck . Traveling in the north i see people in canada and new york carrying the Confederate Flag and its more or less the ones with the fourwheel drive trucks and the baseball caps and everything. Has the trend gone to that side now . It has indee