Why The Confederate Battle Flag Is Even More Racist Than You Think
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/confederate-flag-racist_n_7639788.html
It was not until long after the Civil War ended, however, that the battle flag began to take on even stronger connections to racial injustice.
In the late 1940s, the flag was adopted as a symbol of the Dixiecrats -- a political party devoted to, among other things, maintaining segregation. They also opposed President Harry S. Truman’s proposals to instate anti-discrimination laws and make lynching a federal crime.
Some of the Dixiecrats went so far as to declare their commitment to “white supremacy,” according to The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem by John M. Coski.
Coski writes that though the Dixiecrats soon faded into obscurity, their campaigns “made the flag a fixture in places where it had been only a novelty before.” Coski gives the example of the University of Mississippi, which he notes rarely used the battle flag as a symbol prior to 1948. He says the university began heavily incorporating the symbol into school activities and events a few months after students protested against Truman’s civil rights proposals.
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