Confederate Flag Research Papers

As Winston Churchill stated, “The flags of the Confederate States of America were very important and a matter of great pride to those citizens living in the confederacy. They are also a matter of great pride for their descendants as part of their heritage and history,” but in present day, the American people are claiming the meaning of the confederate flag is hate and discrimination. In South Carolina, the confederate flag was taken down and will be placed in a museum after a heated debate stemming from a mass shooting of nine black churchgoers in a historical Charleston church during bible study. The vote was 103 to 10 in favor of removing the flag. The shooter was white supremacist, Dylann Roof. A photograph of Roof emerged showing him holding

But the Confederate flag did not pass once and for all into the realm of history in 1865. And for that reason, we must examine how it has been used and perceived since then if we wish to understand the reactions that it evokes today. The flag never ceased being the flag of the Confederate soldier and still today commands wide respect as a memorial to the Confederate soldier. The history of the flag since 1865 is marked by the accumulation of additional meanings based on additional uses. Within a decade of the end of the war (even before the end of Reconstruction in 1877), white Southerners began using the Confederate flag as a memorial symbol for fallen heroes. By the turn of the 20th century, during the so-called Lost Cause movement in which white Southerners formed organizations, created and dedicated monuments, and circulated a Confederate history of the war between the states, confederate flags flourished in the South’s public life. Far from being suppressed, the Confederate version of history and Confederate symbols became mainstream in the postwar South. The Confederate national flags were part of that mainstream, but the battle flag was clearly preeminent. The United Confederate Veterans (UCV) issued a report in 1904 defining the square pattern flag as the Confederate battle flag, effectively writing out of the

Instead of being used almost exclusively for memorializing the Confederacy and its soldiers, the flag became fodder for beach towels, t-shirts, bikinis, diapers and trinkets of every description. While the UDC continued to condemn the production of such tackiness, it became so common that, over time, others subtly changed their definition of protecting the flag to defending the right to wear and display the very items that they once defined as desecration. As the dam burst on Confederate flag material culture and heritage groups lost control of the flag, it acquired a new identity as a symbol of rebellion divorced from the historical context of the Confederacy.
While some elected officials are still on the fence about the debate over the confederate flag many are behind the removal of the flag. GOP House Speaker for Mississippi, Phillip Gunn believes that it is time for a change, and that we should remember the past but move on from it. Mississippi State Senator, Kenneth Wayne Jones wants his state to follow suite of the change. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham stated on CNN “I came to conclude after going to Charleston that we had to act and sooner rather than later, and God help South Carolina if we fail to achieve the goal of removing the