It's a Great Day in South Carolina

[Jenny A]

People who fly the Confederate Flag justify it as Southern history, or as the flag of general rebellion.   The kids in the Duke's of Hazard, a 70 TV show flew it from their car while out smarting the Sheriff over and over.  And I guess that really was general rebellion.  But more often then it should be it's merely racist.  

But the only real history it has is post civil war, because that thing isn't the Confederate Flag, and southerns who call it that, don't know their own history:

These were in rapid succession the first two Confederate Flags:

   


The second looked too much like surrender, so they added a bar on the right:




Occassionally you'll hear it called the Confederate Battle Flag.  But it wasn't really the Confederate Battle flag either.  It's the wrong shape.  Here's the battle flag:




What it actually is, is the Confederate Naval flag:



As the Civil War was mostly a ground war, it's not the flag that veterans looked at nostalgically.  It is a 20th Century Southern protest flag, not a Civil War flag.  And equal protection and civil rights are some of what is being protested.  It had no business on a capital flag pole ever.