![]() Throughout the region - off of official grounds - there remain myriad monuments, museum displays and other commemorations of the antebellum chapter in Southern history. For many, flying that flag on grounds where, in the past, lynchings and racist forms of justice were handed down, seemed to keep alive an offensive ideology. The Caddo Parish Courthouse in Shreveport, La., saw the Confederate flag continuing to fly as recently as 2011, when officials voted to take it down. Alabama has featured the flag as part of a Confederate memorial on the grounds of its state Capitol, too, although the state's governor ordered its removal in the wake of the June 2015 event. Mississippi incorporates the Confederate battle flag into its current state flag when a 2001 ballot measure proposed changing this, residents in that state roundly rejected any changes. Still, seven other states in the South also have flags that make various references to the era of the Confederacy. The immediate political and media focus in 2015 was on South Carolina, as that state continued to face outrage, pressure and sanctions from organizations around the country for flying the flag on public grounds. ![]() The central question remains whether the flag can stand distinctly as a generalized remembrance of Southern, geographically based heritage, or whether it is inextricably linked to the enslavement of African-Americans and racist ideology. During the period 2000-2003, South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi all saw significant public controversies over the symbolism of flags in their states, with various public measures and remedies proposed and debated. The origins of the pattern on the Confederate flag - specifically, the "battle flag" - and its precise historical meaning in the American Civil War are complex, as is its subsequent resonance in the decades after the war, and its symbolic import has been hotly contested in more recent decades. In the wake of the June 2015 mass shooting and anti-African American hate crime in a Charleston, S.C., church, many public officials, including the state’s governor, called for the removal of the Confederate flag from grounds near the South Carolina State House, and it was eventually taken down in July. ![]() Research on the Confederate flag, divisive politics and enduring meaningsīy John Wihbey, The Journalist's ResourceĪugResearch on the Confederate flag, divisive politics and enduring meaningsīy John Wihbey, The Journalist's Resource August 15, 2017 ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |