I have changed the title of the thread again, to highlight a
point which I think is important, and which it would seem
(given how badly Professor Finkelman has misinterpreted my
argument) I did not make with sufficient clarity.  Mea
culpa; allow me to beg your collective indulgence and try
again.

*****

Public history--and clearly the Confederate heritage groups
are engaged in a kind of public history--takes place in the
present.  Like all history, even the most abstruse academic
history, it is about the present as much as it is about the
past.  Public history is one of the ways in which people
craft their identity, usually by valorizing the past;
occasionally (as, for example, in the Holocaust Museum in
Washington DC) by holding it up as a moral example of past
atrocities, something, that is, to be condemned morally.
Thus, it strikes me as axiomatic that if the larger society
and culture changes, the context within which public history
takes place changes too.  The symbols of public history
therefore have evolving meaning--they take their meaning not
just from the past, but also from the public conversation of
the present.

I can't imagine that anyone disagrees with any of this.  But
I will stop here, briefly, to ask if what I am saying sounds
reasonable.

*****

Thus, a subtext within the discussion between Professor
Finkelman and myself is "how much has really changed from
the 1950s to now?"  It seems to me self-evident that the
answer to that question must be "a great deal."  IF that is
true--if the racial mores and attitudes and ethics of
southerners are substantially different than they were 50
years ago--AND if you accept my argument about public
history above--THEN it follows logically and of necessity
that the symbols of public history today connote different
things than they did 50 years ago.

I can't imagine that anyone disagrees with that, either.
But I will stop here, briefly, to ask if what I am arguing
sounds reasonable.

*****

Thus, it seems to me a safe bet to presume that the meaning
of the Confederate flag today is something other than what
it was 50 years ago.  This is not the same thing as saying
that the flag is not a symbol of racism.  It may well be.
However, given the nature of political change, it strikes me
as worthy of our consideration that the Confederate flag, to
many of those who display it, means something other than "I
hate black people."  Moreover, there is substantial
anecdotal evidence to support such an interpretation.

Let me be clear that this is a provisional argument.  I
think it is safe to say, however, that even in private,
racism functions differently than it did 50 years ago.  So
even if the Confederate flag is universally a symbol of
racism (and I don't think that it is--although I am open to
being persuaded otherwise) it nonetheless is operating
differently than in the past.

I think the way to find out what is going on is to look at
what the people who are producing this form of public
history--the heritage groups themselves--actually have to
say about the matter.  If Professor Finkelman is correct,
that we can read the symbol of the Confederate flag as
functionally static, continuous with its meaning 50 years
ago, then that should emerge from the evidence itself.

I think this would make a terrific research project, by the
way.  I'd very much like to see what results from it.

*****

Here is the original passage that I wrote, which seems to
have been the source of confusion:

". . . political symbols evolve with time, and it seems
unlikely that the flag now conveys or connotes, to those who
display it, quite the same meaning as it did in 1954.  In
1954 there was a vibrant and angry public political movement
to sustain and preserve Jim Crow.  No such movement exists
today--indeed, in our public life today there is pretty much
uniform consensus that Jim Crow was morally wrong.  Even the
most ardent southern "red neck" today, at least in public,
will say that equal rights for all American citizens is a
good thing.  So the Confederate heritage movement today does
not seem to connote, to those who support it, a
straightforward politics of nostalgia for segregation.
Whatever else the flag means to those who display it today,
it does not mean the same thing as it did 50 years ago."

Warm regards,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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