This question is being asked by many of the state's students, who are just now coming to grips with the state's slave history and how a symbol from that past, which is incorporated in our state flag, divides, rather than unites us. A part of the dialogue on race, the intensifying debate about changing the flag makes this page an important resource for students who wish to argue for changing the state's symbol.

Flags are symbols, which say something useful about those who adopt them, whether it is a country, state or cause. Flags represent the views and values of the people who identify with them; they symbolize a unified commitment to a cause.

Georgia's state flag, which was designed by John Sammons Bell and adopted by Georgia's General Assembly in 1956, pictured above, is made up of two symbols. One is a blue band that contains the state's coat-of-arms, which makes up about 1/3rd of the flag. The remainder is the Confederate battle emblem. With more than 60% of its surface devoted to this symbol, it is the flag's most dominant feature.

This symbol represented the Confederacy in the Civil War. It flew before battle regiments opposed to the United States of America. It represents the slaveholders' vow to "preserve states' rights" and their way of life. The most important states' right the Confederacy fought to preserve was the right to own slaves. To continue slavery, the slaveholders committed treason by taking up arms against the Union.

Slavery is the single issue on which the American government and slave states could not reach a compromise. The slave states wanted to maintain the individual right to own slaves and spread the institution to other non-slave regions of the nation. Slaveholders refused to give up "their way of life." According to historical accounts of an 1861 speech by Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, "slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederacy." The flag that flew before the Confederacy came to represent the slaveholders' determination to continue the economic system, which made them wealthy, a system based on owning slaves, predominantly black people. This system established a white privilege that many in the slave states refused to relinquish.

Georgia's flag has not always included the Confederate battle emblem in its current form; it became a dominant fixture in the state's flag in 1956. Its inclusion in the state's symbol is all about politics and a continued resistance to change. Georgia's General Assembly's decision to include the emblem in the state's flag came on the heels of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Like other Southern states' legislatures, Georgia changed its flag to overtly demonstrate its commitment to segregation forever. In other works, these states never intended to fully integrate their educational institutions or and economy to those traditionally excluded, i.e., African Americans. States like South Carolina and Mississippi chose to fly the Confederate battle flag.

Georgia's state flag is a symbol of division. With more than 40% of its population African American, the flag cannot be considered a symbol around which all citizens of the state can rally. Because it does not represent a cause all Georgians support, the Confederate battle emblem should be removed from the state's flag.

Note: Centennial High 10^th grader Crystal Clemons and Edward Sebesta, an engineer in the semiconductor industry who happens to be an expert on the neo-Confederate movement, deserve credit for the creation of this page. Authors, journalists and others interested in the neo-Confederate movement, contact Ed at newtknight@mindspring.com. Many others have used his research, as we did here. We salute Ed, the teacher, and Crystal the student. See our Kudos to them in Volume 2 Issue 49.

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