I really, really wanted to write about the art of Mesopotamia for my next blog post, especially in light of the destruction of Mesopotamian art and artifacts by the Islamic State, but I have really found myself a wee bit sidetracked by the horrific events of June 17, 2015 when a young man named Dylann Roof sat in Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina before turning his gun on the group. Nine people were murdered that day. Accompanying this news has been the debate about what has come to be known as the Confederate flag, and calls for it to be removed from the state capitol grounds of South Carolina. For those who may not be American, or have not followed the story, South Carolina not only continued to fly the Confederate flag on its state building lawn after the massacre, it was not even flown at half mast.

The Confederate flag has been a subject of much debate in the United States I would argue, since the end of the Civil War. For black people, it represents slavery and a horrible time in United States history. For those who fly it with pride, it is said to represent liberty. The argument has been heated and vehement on both sides. Why is this symbol so polarizing?

As an art historian AND as a Pagan, I am very interested in symbols and what they have represented in the past, what they represent now, and how they might be interpreted in the future. I can’t turn away from these events. The ancient Mesopotamians and their culture will have to wait – American culture and its interpretation are what have my attention at this moment.

Full disclosure: I consider myself a Yankee, and a very liberal one at that. I do not see the term “liberal” as a bad word and proudly consider myself as such. Growing up in Delaware, I did occasionally see the Confederate flag, usually a lone symbol waving rarely on someone’s lawn, or more often on a bumper sticker. I never paid it a great deal of attention, seeing it then more as a symbol for things like southern rock and roll, country music, grits, and people whose accents were different from mine.

As an adult, and as a professor at a historically black university, the Confederate flag has become closely aligned with the swastika for me. Mind you, the swastika did not begin life as a symbol for the Nazi party – it is a bind rune composed of two sowelo runes from the Norse Futhark alphabet, symbolizing the sun. The swastika also has appeared in Native American Indian imagery as a sun symbol, as well as in Indian imagery. In spite of its more ancient origins, however, no one wishing to associate themselves with white supremacy uses a swastika today to symbolize the sun.

In his article,How people convince themselves that the Confederate flag represents freedom, not slavery, Carlos Lozado discusses the history behind the Confederate flag and how it has come to be viewed as a symbol of southern liberty and freedom. He cites the book, The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem, by historian John Costas as stating that Confederate soldiers during the Civil War saw the flag as symbolizing not only pride of place but also the defense of their homes and country from northern invasion.

For those who would argue that the Civil War was about States’ rights, I would agree. It was about individual States’ rights to OWN SLAVES. Please read these words from the official South Carolina Declaration of Secession adopted December 24, 1860:

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.  

The document speaks for itself.

After the secession of South Carolina, the other Confederate states followed suit, using remarkably similar language regarding the holding of slaves. It is difficult for us in the 21st century to comprehend the defense of holding other human beings as property, to be bred and used as chattel, but the seceding states were willing to go to war to defend this way of life. In the article, What This Cruel War Was Over, Ta-nehisi-Coates points out, quite rightly, that slavery was a means to equalize white people. By holding slaves and forcing them to labor on farms and in lesser jobs, white people could have a higher standard of living. People in lower income jobs could still feel a part of a “white aristocracy,” so long as slavery prevailed.

After the end of the Civil War, groups like the Ku Klux Klan came into being to support white supremacy, and the Confederate flag became a symbol of southern “heritage,” and politicians like George Wallace proudly used it as a symbol in their election campaigns.

In the past few days, I have been reading all of these arguments about the Confederate flag, read other arguments stating that it is NOT the Confederate flag, but was instead the battle flag of Northern Virginia. That is indeed the origin of the flag, however one can not deny that it has come to represent the Confederate states. On the face of things, the flag is much like any other. The background is red, and across it is a Saint Andrew’s cross in blue outlined in white. Across the Saint Andrew’s cross are thirteen stars. The thirteen stars represent the thirteen original colonies that formed the United States. On the face of things, it is pretty innocuous. The stars, however, also represent a belief that the northern states had violated the Constitution set forth by the original thirteen states by trying to outlaw slavery for the entire country.

Since its use as the battle flag of Northern Virginia, this flag went on to be adopted by Strom Thurmond in 1948 to protest Harry Truman’s support for civil rights legislation, when he and many other southern Democrats walked out of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that year. He and his colleagues formed a third party, The State’s Rights Democratic Party, which came to be known as the Dixiecrats. This was an effort to use a third party to throw the next presidential election so that no one candidate would have enough electoral votes to win.

In 1956, the state of Georgia changed its flag from a banner with the state’s seal on the left with a background of blue with two horizontal red stripes and one horizontal white stripe to one with the state seal still on the left and the stars and bars of the Confederate flag where the stripes had been. This was two years after Brown vs. Board of Education had been decided. In 1961, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama at the time, raised the Confederate flag over his capital dome, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. At this point in time, the Ku Klux Klan was also using the flag.  In 1962, he raised it again, perhaps as a means of protest against anti-segregationist policies.

As someone who deals with images of all kinds every day, and someone who is aware of the impact of those images and the messages they send, it is very important to understand how images come to mean different things over time. For those who see the “Stars and Bars” as a symbol of southern American heritage, I implore you to take a good hard look at what has been done with this symbol, as I have outlined. Can you truly deny how damaging it is today, particularly to black citizenry? Symbols are powerful in the same way that words are powerful. It was with good reason that the ancient Egyptians regarded words and images as powerful magic. Now is the time to address these wounds of our past, affecting large populations of our citizens. Not only must we be sensitive to the messages this imagery sends out, but also we need to break any illusions we might have in their regards.

I will return to my usual discussion of art history next time, but thinking about the Islamic State destroying Near Eastern artifacts in some ways parallels this discussion. The Islamic State believes that these ancient images are images of false gods and heretical beliefs, and are unable to see them for the beautiful works of art and history that they are. Extreme beliefs have blinded them to the universal value of art to humanity. Conversely, those who wish to see the Confederate flag continue to be displayed are missing the hurt and harm it causes to so much of the United States. In both cases, a narrow kind of tunnel vision is causing damage, both psychic and physical.