The Confederate flag today
Hitch caught me up short with this point in his recent anti-Huckabee tirade:
1) The South Carolina flag is a perfectly nice flag, featuring the palmetto plant, about which no “outsider” has ever offered any free advice.
2) The Confederate battle flag, to which Gov. Huckabee was alluding, was first flown over the South Carolina state Capitol in 1962, as a deliberately belligerent riposte to the civil rights movement, and is not now, and never has been, the flag of that great state.
3) By a vote of both South Carolina houses in the year 2000, the Confederate battle flag ceased to be flown over the state capitol and now only waves (as quite possibly it should) over the memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers.
Now almost everything Hitch writes might be called a tirade; in fact I agree with him 100%.
And it piqued my curiosity. What is the status of the Confederate flag? What states still feature it?
The controversial flag itself, which of course, is properly the Confederate battle flag, was adopted when it was found that the official flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars, too closely resembled the Union’s Stars and Stripes.
The South Carolina flag, which Hitch mentions. Wholly unobjectionable.
The Mississippi flag, which was changed to it present design in the 1950’s, also, as Hitch puts it, “as a deliberately belligerent riposte to the civil rights movement.” Yikes. A state commission in 2000 voted to retain this flag. Here’s the case to restore an earlier Mississippi flag, the “Magnolia” flag.
The Georgia flag, which was adopted in 2003, after years of complaints about the previous design (which incorporated the Confederate battle flag, and was also adopted in 1956.)
The Florida flag, obviously inspired by the Confederate flag. No significant objections to it. Update: Per Grim’s comment below, it comes from a Spanish flag.
The Alabama flag. (See Florida comments.)
The Arkansas flag, whose top star represents the Confederacy, again, without any public objection.
The other flags of former Confederate states show no resemblance to the Confederate flag.
The most noteworthy aspect of this topic is that, save Mississippi, no states actually incorporate the Confederate battle flag in their designs, and that where disputes have come up, they have been resolved through local state action, without much “outside agitation,” except for a few misguided morons like Mike Huckabee.
Garage-flag-gate
Respectfulness at Appomattox
No Flaming F(l)ags
I am offended
The Courage of Stephen Colbert