ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702100119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: KEVIN SACK THE NEW YORK TIMES
SOME WHITE SOUTHERNERS base their identities on the controversial songs, pennants and memorials of the Civil War.
In the 1860s, the fight was about states' rights and slavery. In the 1960s, the battle was joined over voting rights and segregation. Now the war is over symbols, mere vestiges of the previous two campaigns but powerful enough to demonstrate how deep the racial divide remains in a region that calls itself the New South.
Across the region, from the courthouse squares where Confederate monuments stand to the statehouses where the battle flag still flies, the symbols of the Old South are under siege. And just as those symbols represent something larger, so do today's skirmishes over pennants and songs and memorials.
``It really deals with issues of identity and world view and ethnicity,'' said Charles Reagan Wilson, a historian at the University of Mississippi. ``Are we one people or two?'' Many white Southerners base their identity on ancestry, Wilson said, ``and to cut that tie with the symbols, with the genealogy, is for them a kind of cultural death.''
Puncture the surface of today's debates - whether ``Carry Me Back to Old Virginia'' should remain the official state song, whether the Confederate battle flag should fly over the South Carolina Capitol - and you scrape the nerve endings of all of the country's racial conflicts: affirmative action, school desegregation, immigration, welfare, even black English.
These battles over cultural identity have been raging for more than two decades. But perhaps never before have they been fought on so many fronts at any one time.
Most prominent is Gov. David Beasley's crusade in South Carolina to lower the Confederate battle flag from atop the Capitol in Columbia, where it has flown beneath the American and South Carolina flags since 1962. Stiff resistance has emerged in the Legislature, fed by an organized campaign led by the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
In Georgia, Gov. Zell Miller failed in 1993 to change the state flag, which incorporates the Confederate standard. A black plaintiff is awaiting the decision of a federal appeals court in his effort to do away with the current flag.
At the University of Mississippi, where the mascot is the Rebel, officials face resistance in their efforts to dissuade students and alumni from waving the Confederate battle flag and singing ``Dixie'' at athletic events.
And in Maryland, Confederate heritage groups are irate about last month's decision by the Department of Motor Vehicles to recall the 78 Confederate battle-flag license plates that had been issued to members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
In Virginia, the Senate voted in January to retire the state song, ``Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,'' because of its references to ``darkies'' and ``old massa.'' The House of Delegates is expected to follow suit. The measure was first introduced 27 years ago by Douglas Wilder, then a state senator. In 1989, Wilder became the nation's first black elected governor; but when he left office in 1994, the song was still in place.
After learning of the Virginia resolution, a black legislator in Florida last week proposed to eliminate ``Old Folks at Home'' (also known as ``Swanee River'') as that state's song because of its reference to ``darkies,'' its mock black dialect and its nostalgia for the plantation.
The newest targets for attack are the obelisks and statues that stand as monuments to the Confederate dead in almost every Southern courthouse square.
In Franklin, Tenn., Leslie Patrick Steele, a black resident, filed suit in federal court in December seeking removal of that town's Confederate soldier statue, as well as $44million in damages.
Similarly, black leaders in Walterboro, S.C., last month petitioned the Colleton County Council to tear down the Confederate monument that was erected on the grounds of the county courthouse in 1911.
Perhaps, above all, the disputes over symbols illustrate how difficult it is for many blacks and many whites to relate to one another.
White supporters of Old South symbols argue that they are motivated not by racism but by a desire to protect their heritage. ``It's certainly not about race from our position,'' said Christopher Sullivan, executive director of the Southern Heritage Association, which is leading the fight to keep the battle flag flying in South Carolina. ``It's about the courage and valor of Confederate soldiers on the battlefield.''
Leaders of the Sons of Confederate Veterans also argue that the Civil War was not fought primarily over slavery, and that the battle flag has been misappropriated by modern-day racists.
Bunk, said Nelson Rivers III, a South Carolina native who directs the Southeast office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. ``The No.1 lie you hear is that the Civil War was not about slavery,'' he said. ``That's like saying the morgue is not about death. You also hear that the flag should not be offensive, because it's a matter of heritage. The question is, whose heritage are you celebrating?''
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