Lament of the Mind

depressionwerewolf:

epicfailcompilationvideo:

the confederate flag was never actually widely used during the civil war, or even adopted as the official flag of the confederate states of america. it only gained popularity because of its use by both the kkk and the states’ rights democratic party, a political party that opposed desegregation. the confederate flag has always been a symbol of white supremacists.

source: x

“The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.
… It is no accident that Confederate symbols have been the mainstay of white supremacist organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan to the skinheads. They did not appropriate the Confederate battle flag simply because it was pretty. They picked it because it was the flag of a nation dedicated to their ideals: ‘that the negro is not equal to the white man’. The Confederate flag, we are told, represents heritage, not hate. But why should we celebrate a heritage grounded in hate, a heritage whose self-avowed reason for existence was the exploitation and debasement of a sizeable segment of its population?”

- Southern historian Gordon Rhea