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Southern Historical Assocation
New Orlean, La.
November 10, 1995
by Julian Bond

Last Sunday's New York Times reminds us how powerful
and the memories they evoke are. An article describes how the integrated
rock group Hootie and the Blowfish was denied South Carolina's
coveted Palmetto Award because their black lead singer, Darius Rucker,
objected to the Confederate flag flying over the state capitol.

Reverence for the past, and disagreement over what that past
is, is central to the papers presented here,

These two papers focus on flags - in Coski, the Confederate
Battle Flag flies high; Moss raises both it and the Americn
flag.

Both write about these flags as symbolic and real standards,
expressions of ideology confiscated in the context of arguments
over race.

Coski states early on that he will not address the
schizophrenic disconnect between many flag defender's insistence
that the Confederate banner did not celebrate a defense of
slavery and a "rebellion" against the United States and that the
Civil War" had no inherent link to racial issues" and the reality
of a war fought to preserve slavery.

Instead, he traces "the emergence of the flag as a visible
symbol in American life" to its"reuniting" in 1948 and the
Dixiecrat movement with its ideological roots.

He notes that while flag preservationists sometimes objected