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to flag use for racist ends, their objections frequently carried a class bias, inveighing against flag use by those described as "trashier white elements," "leather-jacketed teenagers" and "slack-jawed youths," rather than by the more respectable, middle class opponnets of segregations. ^{I would have listed more disscussion of the class divide in the use of the flag by the sounthern whites.}
Moss, on the other hand, brings black Southerners into the flag debate.
Rather than ceding control of the Confederate Battle Flag to whites, Moss writes, blacks used it too, and she comments on a variety of uses and a variety of flags. She writes about the appropriation of flags, patriotism, and national holidays by opposing sides in the integration wars.
And she makes an excellent point about the declining "unitary significance" of the American flag by the middle 1960s, and the places the
One remembers anti-war rallies of the period where those who marched under the NLF flag resented those who chose to carry the Stars and Stripes.
Both papers remind us that flags send signals of America's racial divide.
Much like the recent O.J. Simpson verdict, the racially polarized voting in this week's contests in Virginia, Mississippi and elsewhere, in the flags they honor, fly, salute or burn, black and white Americans understand and recognize flags' messages differently. Like Colin Powell, flags appear to be blank slates ready to recieve the messages we write upon them.
But these slates are far from blank. They come to us