All flagged out

"IT'S A GRAND old flag.

"It's a high-flying flag,

"And forever in peace may it wave.

"The emblem of

"The land I love,

"The home of the free and the brave."

I think that's how the song goes. I'm going from my memory of, whew, more than 30 years ago when I was in elementary school. Harriet Cantelow taught us all the old patriotic songs. But that was way back when Thurgood Marshall was fighting Communism.

OK, that was a weak attempt to be funny. But it's true that African Americans during the civil rights era were actually very patriotic. It was only after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered that the disillusionment that subsequently prompted many JTC blacks to sit any time the Star-Spangled Banner was played became common.

It was also during the civil rights era that blacks became more sensitive about another banner -- the Confederate battle flag.

Now the rebel battle flag is not to be confused with the Stars and Bars, the official national flag of the Confederacy, which consisted of two red and one white bar with a field of blue in the left corner holding a circle of stars.

The battle flag or Confederate Navy jack is that blue cross of St. Andrew outlined in white, criss-crossed with stars, lying on a field of red. I'm quite familiar with it. It used to fly atop the State Capitol in Alabama until 1993. Now it has become an issue in Maryland.

What others need to keep in mind in discussing the rebel battle flag is that if it were only a symbol of the Civil War and slavery days, most black people probably would not react as strongly to it being on, say, a car license plate.

But problems with this particular flag are more recent. States like Alabama and South Carolina hoisted the Confederate battle flag in the 1960s as a signal of defiance against a federal government that was demanding they open their schools and public accommodations to black people.

The fact that the Ku Klux Klan was lynching people and shooting people and castrating people and bombing people and marching around with that same battle flag hinted that it and the state governments flying the battle flag, or, like Georgia and Mississippi, somehow incorporating it in their state banners, were in collusion.

Now there are those who say they can't help it that modern racists decided to appropriate the battle flag under which their beloved ancestors fought.

An argument, I guess, that could also be made by people of Indo-European descent whose ancestors considered the swastika cross a religious symbol before the Nazis claimed it. But I doubt that a Sons of German World War II Veterans could have gotten the state to issue commemorative car tags with swastikas.

A mistake has been corrected. The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration has revoked the 78 tags with a rebel battle flag logo issued to members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The Sons want to fight the decision in court, but the MVA did the right thing. Maryland should not follow in the footsteps of those states that symbolically got in bed with the Ku Klux Klan.

This is no freedom of speech issue. The Sons can otherwise festoon their cars with rebel flags.

This is not a political issue. Those politicians who called for revocation of the tags already enjoyed overwhelming black support.

When I was a small child one of my favorite TV shows was "The Gray Ghost," which loosely depicted the adventures of John Mosby and his Confederate rangers. I didn't know any better.

We know all we need to know about the Confederate battle flag. We should not pretend that it is a harmless symbol of days long gone. It is also a bitter reminder of the hatred that endures.

Harold Jackson writes editorials for The Sun.

Pub Date: 1/11/97

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