Dear Southerners, The Confederate Flag isn’t About Heritage, it’s a Racist Symbol
The Confederacy was founded on the belief that Abraham Lincoln would force the southern states to give up their slaves.
Yes, the Civil War was about states’ rights, but it was about states’ rights to own slaves. Later, when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the war officially became about slavery, at least in the states that had seceded.

In fact, the Confederate battle flag was never actually the official flag of the Confederacy. While they went through three different flags, the battle flag was never one of them. The battle flag that most people today associate with the South was first used by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. After the war, the flag mostly faded from public view.
I repeat, The Confederate battle flag was NEVER the official flag of the Confederacy.
Designed by the Confederate politician William Porcher Miles, the flag was rejected for use as the Confederacy’s official emblem, although it was incorporated into the two later flags as a canton. It only came to be the flag most prominently associated with the Confederacy after the South lost the war as a sign of resistance to African Americans sharing the same human rights.
It wasn’t until the late 40’s during the Civil Rights Movement, when African Americans were pushing for equal rights, that the battle flag made a prominent resurgence as a symbol of defiance to their cause.
Extremist and white supremacist groups adopted the Confederate battle flag as their symbol, not because of southern pride and culture, but because the flag was used during the Civil War by those who fought to preserve slavery and white supremacy over African Americans. For many African Americans, the Confederate battle flag stands as a symbol of their oppression and labeling as property to be sold, beaten and tortured by their white masters.
By existing, the Confederate States of America broke federal law, making the Confederate flag a symbol of a crime.



It wasn’t until 1948 that the Confederate flag re-emerged as a potent political symbol. The reason was the Dixiecrat revolt — when Strom Thurmond led a walkout of white Southerners from the Democratic National Convention to protest President Harry S. Truman’s push for civil rights. The Dixiecrats began to use the Confederate flag, which sparked further public interest in it.
Consequently, the flag became strongly linked to white supremacy and opposition to civil rights for African Americans. In 1951, Rep. John Rankin (D-Miss.), a very outspoken segregationist, proudly announced that he had “never seen as many Confederate flags in all my life as I have observed floating here in Washington during the last few months.” Rankin himself wore a Confederate flag necktie to serve as a constant reminder of his opposition to “beastly” integration policies.



In 1954, the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered the desegregation of public primary schools, focused the energies and ire of hardcore segregationists throughout the South. Efforts to resist school integration and other civil rights protections for African Americans included the display of Confederate symbols and especially the Confederate battle flag.

I love my home, South Carolina. However, we haven’t earned any bragging rights y’all. As a whole, we are knee deep in uneducated citizens and things will not improve until we understand that this is a huge problem.
— Southern Pride? Are you proud of the fact that we didn’t want people with different skin color to have the same rights as white folks?
— Southern Pride? South Carolina is dead last in education, 48th in opportunity, and ranks number one for deadly violence against women. These stats aren’t anything to be proud of folks.
Stop the hate. Know the facts. Move forward.

