Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 30, 1993 TAG: 9305300073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
To many white Southerners who see it flying over state capitols, as in South Carolina, the flag is a romantic memorial to heroism and a lost cause. To the Lithuanians and East Germans who waved it during the tumultuous last days of communism, it is the sign of the underdog, the rebel. But for most blacks, the Confederate flag is a symbol of oppression, slavery and racist opposition to the struggle for civil rights. To the Ku Klux Klan, Skinheads and Aryan Nation, it means white supremacy.
Now, for the first time, all these factions have come together in one room in a new exhibit, the "Embattled Emblem," at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, the old Confederate capital.
The exhibit traces the history of the flag, its use in battle, and, perhaps more important, how it has become woven into the fabric of modern American culture, appearing on everything from beach towels and matchbooks to the January cover of Penthouse magazine.
The exhibit is opening as controversy over the 125-year-old flag continues to make headlines: Alabama and Georgia struggling over removing the symbol from the top of their capitol domes; Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., taking on Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and the United Daughters of the Confederacy to reject a 95-year-old Confederate design patent; and Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder ordering the emblem removed from a National Guard unit.
But the exhibit offers no point of view on the flag and whether it has a place in modern society. In fact, it asks for yours. Survey forms are placed next to an audio tape that gives equal time to the divergent opinions of leaders from the NAACP, KKK, American Civil Liberties Union and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
"Our exhibit cannot and was not intended to make a decision," said Malinda Collier, museum collections manager. "For many people, the flag represents chattel slavery. For many, it represents the valor and heroism of the individual soldiers. We want people to come and examine their own views."
The exhibit includes a collection of about 100 photographs, original tattered wool flags, novelty items and newspaper clippings.
A video montage shows civil rights advocates calling for the Georgia flag to come down, Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat presidential bid, football fans waving the flag at a 1950s game and U.S. soldiers flying the Confederate flag in Korea to protest fighting under the United Nations flag. The film also shows the flag emblazoned on car hoods, antennae and outside dorm rooms in defiance of federal orders to desegregate Southern schools.
One particularly evocative photograph shows a wary Martin Luther King at a voter registration drive in Selma, Ala., being stopped by a police officer with a tiny Confederate flag on his helmet.
The photograph is perhaps the clearest illustration of the two clashing views of the flag: to blacks, a symbol of racism; to white Southerners, a symbol of rebellion against federal edicts.
"We've got two rights here," said Michael S. Kogan, a New Jersey philosophy professor with Southern roots who is underwriting the $10,000 exhibit. "I can try to understand the other side and come to a compromise."
But Ralph Hutchins, a black cab driver in Richmond and an avid Civil War buff, sees little room for compromise.
"When I see someone with a Confederate flag in the back of their car, I stay away," he said. "I know we won't see things eye to eye."
But Kogan, whose great-great-grandfather fought for the Confederacy, sees the flag as an icon of rebel romance. The "War Between the States," he says, was fought for state's rights and the freedom to secede from the union, not for slavery. The only racism associated with the flag, in Kogan's view, is because it was "grabbed by yahoos" like the Klan.
But historians like John Coski, who works at the museum, say the state's rights argument begs the question: the state's right to do what? "It boils down in that mix to slavery," Coski said. "The South has to come to grips with the slavery in its past."
By giving the controversial flag an unbiased public airing, Coski hopes to move the continuing debate over the Civil War and the Confederacy to a new level.
"I dearly believe it's good for everyone to approach the flag objectively . . . Because that's where the common ground lies. And with understanding comes tolerance."
by CNB