Cynthia Tucker 3/26/2003 | Norman Ravitch 4/28/2003

9/21/2004: Somehow I missed this. The latest official Georgia state flag is now a replica of the flag of the Confederate States of America with the state seal within the circle of stars. Huzzah! A commemoration of Lincoln's "war against the secession of the southern states."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/07/politics/campaigns/07GEOR.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

November 7, 2002

An Old Battle Flag Helps Bring Down a Governor

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

TLANTA, Nov. 6 — It was a hidden grudge, so private, apparently, that no polls picked it up.

Last year Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, led a successful effort to change Georgia's state flag, which then prominently featured the Confederate battle cross.

Georgia State Flag, 1879-1902
Georgia's flag history
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1920-1956 Georgia flag based upon
the flag of the Confederate States of America
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The 1956 flag based upon
the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia
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Barnes blunder banner...
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This Tuesday, he paid the price.

In their first chance to vent their anger, white voters in rural areas turned out in record numbers to vote out Mr. Barnes in one of the most stunning upsets this year. The governor had been considered one of the brightest lights in the Democratic Party, a gifted speaker, moderate, strong on education and a possible contender for vice president or even president.

Much of the state's Democratic leadership was swept out on Tuesday, after a campaign that featured frequent visits for Republican candidates by President Bush and harsh advertisements against Senator Max Cleland, a Democrat seeking a second term.

But the governor's defeat was the biggest surprise of the night here, and in the morning-after search for answers, the flag issue surfaced as a leading explanation.

"There was this huge undercurrent of resentment and anger about the flag, but I think we all missed it because it's not something people discuss in the open," said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. "The Confederate flag is still a very powerful symbol. A lot of white voters felt Barnes was not on their side when he pushed to change it."

The rural white voting base was mobilized this year as never before, but it did not simply follow Republican marching orders. What happened was more personal than that. While the governor lost badly in rural counties like Floyd and Colquitt, his Democratic partner, Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, won there, showing that voters were angry not at all Democrats but certainly at Mr. Barnes.

"The flag was definitely part of the equation," said another Georgia Democrat, Senator Zell Miller. "I could spend all day and all evening trying to explain why this is such an emotional issue. It just is."

Though the state banner is not the only reason Democrats were routed in Georgia, it is part of a basket of problems the party faces here. Democrats are seen as out of touch with the state's conservative values. Georgia, with its 11 major military bases, its large rural areas and its Deep South traditions, proved in 2000 that it was solid Bush country. Once again on Tuesday, it went heavily Republican.

Another upset was the defeat of Senator Cleland, a decorated Vietnam veteran, to his Republican challenger, Representative Saxby Chambliss. The Democratic speaker of the Georgia House, Tom Murphy, who had held his seat for 41 years, also lost, as did a Democratic candidate in a new Congressional district that had been gerrymandered by the Democratic-controlled legislature to produce a Democratic representative.

"This was a train that has been coming down the track for the past 10 years," Senator Miller said. "Georgia is not the solid Democratic state it was in the past. It's very competitive. The Republicans did a masterful job of energizing their base."

One of Mr. Perdue's campaign promises was to have a referendum on the state flag, resurrecting a matter that dated from January 2001, when Governor Barnes, intervening in a longtime battle, pushed for a new flag design.

Georgia had remained one of the last Southern states to feature the Confederate battle cross on their flags. Blacks said the flag was racist, but many whites said it spoke to their heritage. Mr. Barnes stepped into the middle of the controversy with a proposal to shrink the symbol to a small box at the bottom of the flag.

The legislature quickly approved the compromise, but the move infuriated many white voters across the state, who turned against the governor on Tuesday. In rural Worth County, Mr. Barnes won 57 percent of the vote when he ran for governor in 1998; this year he scored 45 percent. In another rural county, Laurens, he won 60 percent four years ago; this year it was 39 percent. In all, Mr. Barnes won just 46 percent of the statewide vote, against 52 percent for Mr. Perdue.

Asked whether it could have been the governor's progressive education plans, or perhaps his close ties to the black leadership of Atlanta, William Boone, a political science professor at Clark Atlanta University, said he did not think so. "The flag dragged Barnes down," Dr. Boone said. "He was one of the most progressive governors in the South. Now he's gone."

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/tucker/2003/032603.html
also see her column on Zell Miller's take on all this at

http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/tucker/2003/021903.html

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 3/26/03 ]

1956 flag flew to defy desegregation

Email Tucker

The 1956 Georgia General Assembly was a House afire -- and a Senate, too -- with anger over federal orders to desegregate public schools. The Legislature charged to the defense of white supremacy with a fusillade of resolutions, proclamations and laws designed to keep black Georgians in their place.

That year, Georgia legislators rebuked the FBI and the U.S. attorney general for intervening in a Cobb County case in which a black man was accused of raping a white woman; they declared the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education null and void; they required segregated waiting rooms in train stations and bus depots; they required the State Patrol and the GBI to enforce segregation laws; they commended an Ohio federal judge for "his determination to ignore the absurd directives" ordering desegregation; they opposed the Federal Aid for Education Bill; and they set up the All-South Centennial Committee for the centennial celebration of the Civil War.

Oh, yeah. They also changed the Georgia state flag to feature the St. Andrew's cross and stars, "such remainder being popularly known as The Battle Flag of the Confederacy," according to the act passed by the Legislature.

As Gov. Sonny Perdue drags out the debate over his proposed referendum, he should bear in mind that the claims of "Southern heritage" held aloft by the flaggers don't hold up to historical analysis. A look back at the segregationist agenda of the 1956 General Assembly helps to explain why so many Georgians, especially black Georgians, view the 1956 flag with hostility and suspicion.

The anti-integration fervor that fueled the Georgia Legislature through the 1950s has been meticulously documented by State Court of Appeals Judge Alan Blackburn in his master's thesis, "Brown v. Board of Education: A Southern Response."

". . . [The 1956 flag's] defenders contend it was intended solely to honor the Southern soldiers who fought in the Civil War and arose out of the 'all-South Centennial Committee' activities. [But] the 'committee' . . . which [was to] promote the centennial celebration of the Civil War, wasn't approved until March 9, 1956, while the 1956 flag had already been approved by the Georgia Legislature on February 13, 1956," Blackburn noted.

Besides, the pre-1956 flag honored "Southern heritage" as much as any banner could; it closely resembled the first national flag of the Confederacy. (According to the late Denmark Groover, an influential former legislator, the United Daughters of the Confederacy opposed the 1956 flag change for that reason.)

But the all-white Georgia Legislature chose the St. Andrew's cross with stars for a clear and compelling reason: It was the in-your-face banner adopted by the scowling, hate-filled face of Southern resistance as it burned crosses, beat civil rights protesters and threatened black schoolchildren. The 1956 flag had little to do with the Civil War, but much to do with the war against civil rights.

Two years ago, at age 78, Groover made a courageous appearance before the General Assembly to urge its members to put to rest this "most divisive issue on the political spectrum." He reminded legislators that he had been instrumental in the passage of the 1956 flag, since he was floor leader to then-Gov. Marvin Griffin, who had vowed to defend segregation.

"I presented the matter to the House," Groover recalled, "and . . . probably used some rhetoric indicating that the new flag was to symbolize our defiance of the action of the federal judiciary on matters involving race." It was that rhetoric -- "This will show that we in Georgia intend to uphold what we stood for, will stand for and will fight for," Groover said at the time -- that overcame opposition from the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

And that fiery defiance of desegregation is the "heritage" embodied in the 1956 flag.

Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor [of the Atlanta Journal Constitution]. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.

Jacques Tucker, the owner and webmaster of Jacq.org, is descended from Robert Tucker who emigrated from England in the 1630s to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His colonial progeny lived in Connecticut and Vermont. There is no indication these folks ever owned slaves of any sort. Jacques currently resides in Missouri. He lived a few years in southwestern Georgia during the 1960s and is a graduate of Florida State University. Jacques would like to see a return to the 1920 or 1879 flag, but what do Missourians know, eh?

See the Georgia Secretary of State's web site showing the more than twenty flags that have flown and are flying over the state.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/ravitch3.html

Repeating History as Farce

by Norman Ravitch

Marx’s comment on repeating history as farce is one of his more valid pronouncements.

Here in Georgia we are reliving Reconstruction, that is to say we are having the first Republican administration and legislature (half of it, anyway) since Reconstruction.

During Reconstruction as everyone not educated by NAACP propaganda in the public schools knows, white opportunists came South, disenfranchised ex-Confederates, and gave political power to ex-slaves. It was a disaster, and led only to the creation of the KKK, the beginning of Jim Crow, and the New South. The Republican experiment in the South came to an end with the managed election of Hays over Tilden.

Well, here in Georgia we elected last fall a Republican governor (much to everyone’s surprise including his own) and a Republican State Senate, after a little party-switching. The current legislative session has come to an end with a disastrous display of disharmony and stupidity.

The new Governor Sonny Perdue (I shall remind those who have not learned any French, hell few have learned English! that in French perdu(e) means "lost") wanted to replace the new state flag given to Georgia by his predecessor Roy Barnes with one more beloved of the Southern heritage people. He proposed a referendum concerning possible flag choices – a non-binding referendum, lest people should really have a decisive say in anything – and one of the choices would have been the old St. Andrews Cross flag, which Confederates revere and the NAACP abominates as the Confederate battle flag.

Well, the Republicans have handled this matter so skillfully that in an upcoming referendum, non-binding of course, the choice will be between the current Barnes flag, which everyone hates, and a version of the pre-1956 flag, which has some Confederate allusions but not enough to satisfy real Southerners. Lost is the possibility of choosing the St. Andrews Cross flag.

With such a pyrrhic victory several things become clear. First, only the flag-making industry will benefit from any of this. Secondly, the Republicans who were elected because of disgust at the Barnes flag have demonstrated that all they care about is repudiating Barnes and are not a bit interested in satisfying the Confederate lobby. This will cause all sorts of upheaval next election time. Probably the Republicans will experience another loss as they did in 1877. Of course, the Democratic Party in Georgia no longer represents the majority, so its hold on power cannot but be precarious.

Thus Georgia repeats its history, this time as farce. Who will our new Nathan Bedford Forrest be? Atlanta business interests like to say that Georgia’s elite is too busy to hate. Evidently it is also too busy to think.

April 28, 2003

Norman Ravitch [send him mail], professor of history emeritus at the University of California at Riverside, lives in Georgia.