MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Whenever seven-term state Rep. Alvin Holmes looks up at the dome of the historic Alabama Statehouse here, his blood begins to boil.
The Confederate flag flying there may be a symbol of pride to others in Montgomery, the state capital and self-styled "Cradle of the Confederacy." But to Holmes, who is black, the Rebel banner stands for something radically different.
"I see the flag of a defunct and disgraced nation, one that wanted to hold my forebears in slavery," he said. "Every Confederate flag or symbol of the Confederacy should be barred from Alabama and every other part of the country."
Common View of Blacks
However extreme that prescription may seem, Holmes' reaction to the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy is common among black Southerners--and it underscores a continuing problem for the South in the region's attempts to create a truly biracial society.
Symbols and memorials of the South's Confederate heritage abound below the Mason-Dixon line. The familiar red flag with a blue X-shaped cross flies over statehouses, on college campuses and from flagstaffs on private residences. Copies of the flag, on automobile tags, T-shirts, baseball caps and beach towels, are sold at countless truck stops and roadside stores.
At college football games, "Dixie" is an eternally popular fight song. Hundreds of Confederate monuments and statues stand in Southern town squares. A typical inscription is this one on the Confederate monument in Augusta, Ga: "No nation rose so white and fair, none fell so pure of crime."
And in each of the 11 Southern states that formed the Confederacy, there are holidays celebrating such Confederate heroes as President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Potency of Symbols
Blacks and whites, however, are deeply divided over the meaning of these symbols and memorials and what prominence they should be given. The schism attests to the potency of symbols and to the important role they play in human society.
"To blacks, there's no doubt that they symbolize racism and white supremacy, much as the Nazi swastika symbolizes anti-Semitism to Jews," said Charles Wilson, a historian at the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture. "To whites, the meaning is more ambiguous. To many, they are symbols of what they see as a noble Civil War heritage. To a lot of poor whites, they may symbolize individualism and white ethnic pride, like country music. To the klan, they stand for white purity."
To Kevin Barnett, a white Atlanta factory worker who sports a Confederate flag on his cap and has an outsized Rebel banner hanging in the living room of his apartment, the Confederate emblems symbolize protest against authority.
"They ain't got nothing to do with hating black people or any of that KKK stuff," he said. "All they mean to me is 'get the government off my back and leave me the hell alone.' "
Of all the reminders of the South's Confederate tradition, undoubtedly the most controversial are the Rebel flag and the song "Dixie." They are the source of never-ending friction between blacks and whites, hampering efforts by the South to move completely out of the shadows of its racial past.
In Georgia, for instance, a fierce debate has erupted over whether the Georgia state flag should be redesigned to remove the Confederate Stars and Bars from the banner. The controversy was sparked by the spectacle of the hundreds of Ku Klux Klan members and their sympathizers waving Confederate flags and shouting "Nigger, go home!" at black marchers during a civil rights demonstration in January in all-white Forsyth County, just north of Atlanta.
Belongs in Museum
"The rightful place for the Stars and Bars is in a museum," said black state Rep. Frank Redding of Decatur, who has introduced legislation that would replace the Confederate emblem on the Peach State flag with three horizontal bars--one white between two red.
The white and red bars were part of the state flag before 1956. In that year, however, in a gesture of defiance against the winds of civil-rights change that began sweeping over the old Jim Crow South, the Georgia Legislature replaced the bars with the blue diagonal cross and red field of the Confederate banner.
"The Stars and Bars does have special meaning for the descendants of Confederate veterans--and I respect that," Redding said. "At the same time, I don't think Jeff Davis or Robert E. Lee would be proud seeing white racists like those in Forsyth County with their bellies hanging over their belts, waving Confederate flags and Nazi swastikas."
'It's Very Disturbing'
Caroline Perkey, president general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, agrees with that. "It's very disturbing to us to see the KKK and the White Patriot Party use the Confederate flag the way they do," said Perkey, of Lenoir City, Tenn. "We wish we had some law to protect how the flag is displayed."
