3

heavily freighted with a history of use as emblems in the race war. Those who use then know these flags carry great weight.
Just as many white Americans invested an enormous amount of emotional energy in Simpson's guilt, many white Southerners have had, and have today, an enormous historical-emotional investment in appropriating the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of white supremacy.
Many blacks did, and still do, share this view, and as Moss writes, many blacks saw the American flag as the Confederate flag's opposite.
There is ample evidence in the recent past of the Confederate flag's associations, readily understood by those who use it.
In March of this year, 19-year-old Kenneth Westerman was memorialized in Guthrie, Kentucky. He had been killed in January in Springfield, Tennessee. Seven black youths have been charged with his murder in what police say was a reaction to the Confederate flag he displayed on his truck.
At the Westerman service, where a Confederate flag draped his grave, the Heritage Chairman of Kentucky Sons of Confederate Veterans memorialized the dead man as "a fallen Confederate patriot. He joined the Confederate dead under the same honorable circumstances."
Another mourner, dressed in what newspapers described as an antebellum hoop skirt, said, "He gave his all. He gave his life."