...Recently, the Confederate Flag has been the center of a major controversy that has spanned the entire United States. Many writers, when speaking on the subject of the Confederate Flag, now use words like “racism,” “controversy,” and “a symbol of hate.” Other writers, like John M. Coski, use words like “cultural property” and “a very practical banner.” The Confederate Flag that we know today was actually not the official flag of the Confederacy. Instead, the “Stars and Bars,” as it was nicknamed during the Civil War era, was actually the battle flag. The design was adopted by the Confederate Congress in March 1861 because of its resemblance to the American Flag. So how did this Civil War era banner spark so much controversy within the American...
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...Confederate Flag Controversy On July 9, 2015 a bill was presented to the House of Representatives asking that the use of the confederate battle flag be discontinued due to the fact that it represents only pain, torture, humiliation, and racial oppression (Congressional Bills and Votes 2013). This bill was presented in the wake of the Emmanuel 9 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. Our elected officials, along with some American citizens are calling for knee-jerk legislation instead of taking time to get to the root of the real issue at hand. This type of legislation will only cause more tension and divide amongst the American people, when we need to start coming together as a nation. Seeking to destroy our history by removing it from...
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...Confederate Flag Controversy Jim Clyburn, I have a problem I would like to address with you, the Confederate Flag Controversy. Why do people have such different and, conflicting ideas of what the flag actually means. How did those different meanings, evolve? The Civil War started in 1861 and ended in 1865, but before it started they had the presidential election lead by republicans. Abraham Lincoln supported the idea of banning slavery in all U.S. Territory. The south saw it as a violation of their constitutional rights because they were gonna abolish it anyways but argued the north had a higher percentage because of industrial work. During the Civil War Confederate Soldiers saw the flag as a symbol of confederacy. It became a national...
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...The flag was first flown in 1962 to signify the governor’s protest against desegregation. On June 22, the Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, had called for the Confederates flag’s removal from any grounds belonging to the state. There were then many calls for the Confederate flag to be removed from any government building, and well as many discussions on the actual meaning of the flag by several figures in our country, including some such as Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and even President Barack Obama. On June 20, thousands of people rallied in front of the South Carolina State House in protest of the flag. 370,000 signatures were also collected on an online survey to ban the...
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...“Confederate flag was the flag of traitors” by Dean Obeidallah appeared in the CNN opinion section on October 25, 2013 as a special to CNN. CNN is one of the very few cable networks that do news coverage 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. It has won several awards such as the TCA award for outstanding achievement in news and information, several EPPY award presented by Editor and Publisher, and three Emmy awards. CNN was started in 1980 by Ted Turner and gets around fifth teen million hits per month on its website. CNN covers everything when it comes to news coverage all the way from politics to world news and is seen to have a neutral view on subjects in the news. Obeidallah’s article covers why he believes the confederate flag is the flag of traitors by stating “you can debate whether the confederate flag is a symbol of racism but you can’t dispute the confederate flag was flown by traitors that killed more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers. He continues by saying the confederate flag wasn’t even the flag of the confederacy and was the battle flag of the northern Virginia army. Obeidallah shows why he believes the confederate flag is the flag of traitors by giving speeches that the president of the confederacy saying that they would kill any U.S. troop that stepped foot into the confederate nations. He even threatened General Ulysses S. Grant by stating “Our cavalry and our people will harass and destroy his army as did the Cossacks that of napoleon, and the Yankee general, like him...
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...Confederate Flag Issues There has been a lot of controversy over whether the Confederate Flag should be allowed to be flown or if it should be taken down and banned. I think it should be allowed because everyone has their own opinions of what the Confederate flag represents. Nobody is going to have the same opinions about everything. The most important thing is the Confederate Flag doesn’t represent slavery its represents a status as a memorial to the Confederate soldier. There were several flags of the Confederate States of America used since 1861-1865. The first official flag of the Confederacy, called the "Stars and Bars," was flown from March 5, 1861, to May 26, 1863 (Coski 1). What is now often called "The Confederate Flag" or "The Confederate Battle Flag”. It is also called the "rebel", "Southern Cross, or "Dixie" flag, and is often incorrectly referred to as the "Stars and Bars" the actual "Stars and Bars" is the First National Flag, which used an entirely different design (Coski 1). The First Amendment and the history of its interpretation of the United States has what comes closest to absolute protection of free speech of any country. Many...
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...the spotlight, the Confederate flag. Individuals were forced to depart with a piece of their history and a sense of pride while others seen an end to something that offends them or their culture. History or Racism The Confederate flag as we know it was the last of four different flag designs used by the Confederate Army. The current flag that has been used across the nation was introduced in 1863 and stood as a symbol of southern pride until just recently. The flag has been in the middle of controversy for many years mainly due to groups or organizations using it as a symbol to represent hate and racism. Each time it was argued that the flag was not intended for those purposes and it continued to fly above the South Carolina until after a debate over the flag came after a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine dead and renewed questions over the meaning of the flag. ("Sc Confederate Flag Taken Down From State Capitol In South Carolina", 2015). Decision to be made After the shooting, the media shined the spotlight on all of the protest that began with civil rights activist after facts were made public about the racial comments made during the tragedy and photos were discovered of him with Confederate flags in the background South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed the legislation to remove the Confederate flag on July 9th, 2015 ("Confederate Flag Removed From South...
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...prohibiting Mississippi teams from pkaying against black athletes, but legislators threatened to withdraw funds from schools violating this unwritten law. The university of Mississippi, ranked number two, would not play Michigan State, ranked number one, in the bowl game to determine the nation’s top football team in 1961” (Paul 284-5). This long and fought off integration of the university’s football program derives from its deep history of racism. Many of the predominant and well thought of symbols of Ole Miss football are directly related to slavery, white supremacy and racism. The Confederate flag was seen at all football games and carried by both fans and cheerleaders. The lyrics of the school’s unofficial fight song, “Dixie,” tell of the times of the slavery ridden South. The team’s nickname, the Rebels, arose as a result of the Ole Miss students who sacrificed their lives for the Confederate army. The nickname for the school itself was the name for Ole Master’s wife during the slavery age (Oriards 80). Michael Oriards explains it best...
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...Is the Confederate Flag a modern day symbol of Southern culture or a symbol representing Racial injustice the violation of a right or rights of another? This is actually a question that comes up quite often, people want to know what the confederate flag stands for. Many people think different reasons that the confederate flag is still flown, in this paper i’m going to tell you why I think that the flag Is a sign Racial Injustice the violation of a right or rights of another. Some the reasons I will talk about are, What the Confederate Flag stud for during the civil war, why the flag represents racial injustice, what it means today. What did the confederate flag stand for during the civil war? The confederate flag was a symbol of the 11 states that seceded from the united states in 1861. They wanted a flag to represent their states before and after the civil war. “The confederate states seceded from the union to preserve slavery and political liberty for whites” according to, History.com Staff. “Confederate States of America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/confederate-states-of-america. During the civil war and the creation of the confederate flag it stud for what the South believed which was racial injustice the violation of a right or rights of another. That's what the confederate flag stud for during the civil war....
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...The Confederate flag has been one the most controversial and divisive symbol in American history. Recently, in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, the country has been in an uproar over the confederate flag. The shooting sparked discussion on whether the flag is hateful or represents the south’s history. Numerous people wanted the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house. Many people believe that the confederate flag represents southern pride and southern history, but in the mind of many others the flag represents slavery and the years and years of the oppression of African-Americans and other minorities. One of the reasons the confederate represents represents hate is that many hate-groups use it. Today, more than 500 extremist groups use the Confederate flag as one of their symbols, but the most known hate group that uses this flag is the KKK. The Ku Klux Klan’s predominant goal is to establish white supremacy in the south. Most of the KKK hate crimes target African-Americans, multiracial families, and interracial couples. The KKK also torched black churches and lynched mostly African-American people, or people that went against their beliefs....
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... 2015 The Confederate Flag On June 17, a man named Dylann Roof was part of a crime scene. He shot and killed nine black church members in Charleston, SC, and injured 3 more. This young man was a white supremacist who took action against what he thought were the enemy. He was a known white supremacist among his peers. He would go on rants about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the Baltimore protests that occurred earlier this year. His rants stated that “blacks were taking over the world” and that he told planned to kill people. He had a lot of pictures with the confederate flag in them, and he stated his support of racial segregation in the United States. Roof also had a website that was registered to him. On this website he had pictures of himself posing in front of a confederate battle flag holding a handgun, along with “a nearly 2,500-word manifesto in which the author criticized blacks as being inferior while lamenting the cowardice of white flight” (Robles para 3). Dylann Roof used the confederate flag as a symbol for white supremacy. He used the image in multiple places, including his website and on his car's license plates. This usage of the confederate flag shows how it could easily be used in hate crimes, and it is known to be a popular image among white supremacist groups. Valley Forge flag Co. is a business that produces and sells flags. This company has a huge presence in the United States with 4 locations and 300 employees. “It's American flags have been with...
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...The Confederate Flag was adopted by the Confederate States of America around February of 1861 to serve as the official flag of their movement towards the expansion of utilizing enslaved African people forced into America through the slave trade. “We know, as Confederates knew, that their dream of independence and liberty was based on a social and economic foundation of black labor” (Binnington 4) The south had their ‘black labor’ for years; however, soon this did change. The March after the Confederate States succession, Abraham Lincoln was elected president and, though stating he would not try to end the use of slaves, he ran on a platform that was against the expansion of slavery. Ultimately, this led to the Civil War between the anti-slavery...
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...state flag of Mississippi was not always the one you see flying today. According to the University of Mississippi, the “Magnolia”, was considered the state flag for over thirty years before the Mississippi State legislature adopted the current flag in 1894. This current flag, now the state flag for over one hundred years, has three stripes- blue, white, and red- and a small version of the Confederate battle cross in the upper left-hand corner. This Confederate battle cross, created in 1861, is often recognized as a symbol of hatred or racism, especially toward the African American community. This is due largely to the Civil War. This war fought between the north and the south had immense racial tension, as one sizeable cause of the Civil...
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...He even proudly carried the Confederate flag in his backpack and posted it on the wall in his college dorm room to signify pride in states’ rights. He also dreamed becoming a soldier in the Confederate Army. His grandmother was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This makes him a great source for the purpose of this book because he has real world experiences of the events and ideas that circulated around that time. The author also mentions how hard it was for him to write the book because he was surprised to fully understand how secession was related to racism and white supremacy. However, his Confederate-minded childhood could also be a source of bias insofar as his interpretations of secession and the controversies surrounding the Civil War, in addition to the documents he used to write this particular book. Chapter 1 2. What are the controversies surrounding the mural of Robert E. Lee and Confederate History Month in Virginia (hint: they are related to the same issue!)? There were a series of debates surrounding whether or not a mural of Robert E. Lee should be placed by Canal Way built along the James River. The NAACP spoke against the mural, saying that Lee was an advocate for slavery since he fought for the Confederacy. Pro-Lee advocates, including former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, voted in favor of the mural. The court finally decided to make the mural. The other controversy was the one about Confederate History Month. Republican...
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...The Confederate battle flag has a lot of issues surrounding it today. Some people think that it is a sign of racism, while others believe it to be a sign of their heritage. I believe that the confederate flag should not still fly today because it is used as a symbol of hate and racism as well as a symbol of white supremacy. Some people don’t have the general knowledge of the topic, so I will be covering that, as well as a case in texas regarding license plates with the flag on them, and its relation to the nazi flag. The confederate flag has become a symbol for many people about many different things. The meanings that this symbol holds is really in the “eye of the beholder” The viewer of the symbol can assign it to any meaning they want....
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