History of the Confederate Flag

As the United States struggles with racial inequality a divisive symbol is receiving renewed scrutiny: The confederate flag. But the history of this controversial emblem is more complex than one might expect.Check this out:https://ultimateflags.com/blog/history-of-the-confederate-flag/

When the Confederate States of America solicited designs for a national flag early in 1861, hundreds were submitted (there would eventually be two others). The winning design was known as the Army of Northern Virginia flag or “Stars and Bars,” featuring a white star for each secessionist state against a blue background, which separated it from the Union flag. It was a soldier’s flag, designed to rally comrades during the fearsome disarray of battle.

Tracing the Past: History of the Confederate Flag

It also served as a powerful metaphor for the Lost Cause, the tenets of Southern heritage that argued that the failure of the Civil War was just a natural result of defending slavery. The symbol was so firmly anchored in the psyche of white southerners that many states passed laws punishing the “desecration” of the flag.

The ubiquity of the Confederate flag began to fade after World War II. As African Americans made headway in the struggle for civil rights, the image of the battle flag was reframed as one of white supremacy. This new meaning gave the flag a potent appeal to whites who were angry about civil rights, and it became the emblem of the Dixiecrat Party, a group of conservatives that opposed Harry S. Truman and his relatively sympathetic stance on civil rights.