Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South. (Book Reviews).

Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South. Edited by J. Michael Martinez, William D. Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2000. Pp. xvi, 351. $49.95, ISBN 0-8130-1758-0.)

As controversies rage over flying the Confederate flag above southern state capitols, historians and the public have become interested in the Lost Cause and its continued influence in the South today. A better understanding of symbols of the Confederate past and how they came to be is essential if Americans are to confront the legacy of slavery and the Civil War on race relations in the twenty-first century. This collection of essays--written primarily by political scientists, with attorneys and a historian among the others--attempts to present a balanced (though not always impartial) examination of the issues. Although some of the information is familiar, the book succeeds in providing historical background, legal analysis, and public opinion data all in one collection.

Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South has several excellent essays, including "The Confederate Battle Flag in Historical Perspective" by John M. Coski. Coski nicely summarizes the evolution of the Confederate flag and its subsequent display and meaning in the twentieth century, showing how it came to have significant racial overtones. The most gripping essay is a previously published article by James Forman Jr. In "Driving Dixie Down: Removing the Confederate Flag from Southern State Capitols," Forman challenges the decision of the Eleventh Circuit Court in NAACP v. Hunt, which allowed the Alabama state capitol to continue to fly the Confederate flag. He argues that to do so "violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because the flag was raised with the intent to discriminate against blacks ... [and] that the flag violates the First Amendment because it is a form of racist government speech that chills the speech rights of African Americans" (p. 195). Although it is difficult to provide direct evidence linking the flag to specific acts of discrimination against blacks, Forman examines when and why the flag was raised to show that the state government did intend to discriminate and did not have any "legitimate, nondiscriminatory reasons" to fly the flag. Moreover, Forman uses the idea of social context, first used effectively in the Brown v. Board of Education case, to disprove the court's decision that the flag affects all citizens, white and black, equally and that perceived discrimination was caused only by the emotions of black viewers.

Several essays highlight the wide range of views on Confederate symbols. In "Traditionalist Perspectives on Confederate Symbols," J. Michael Martinez examines the most extreme ends of the continuum of Confederate symbols as history or racism. Although he allows that heritage preservationists celebrate "traditional Southern values of independence, defiance of tyrannical authority, and the beliefs of fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity" (p. 244), he ultimately concludes that they risk credibility when they ignore all issues of race and refuse to acknowledge the use of the Confederate flag by racist groups for racist purposes. Robert Holmes and M. Christine Cagle, in "The Great Debate: White Support for and Black Opposition to the Confederate Battle Flag," present an impartial overview of debates over the flag in South Carolina and Georgia. By showing that whites and blacks were both for and against the flag, they remind readers how complicated the issue is because opinion is not divided precisely along racial lines. This caveat is underscored by the research of Beth Reingold and Richard S. Wike. In "Confederate Symbols, Southern Identity, and Racial Attitudes: The Case of the Georgia State Flag, Part Two," they use data gathered from an opinion poll to conclude that although not all southerners who have strong ties to southern identity are racially conservative, such racial views were a strong predictor for support for the Confederate flag.

The weakest section of the book is the first, in which Robert C. Jeffrey, George Schedler, and Robert P. Steed and Laurence W. Moreland provide background on southern political thought. Schedler attempts to argue that the South should not be stereotyped as racially conservative because African Americans and Jews are southerners too. Not only does Schedler use Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as representative of his generation of black southerners, but the author's argument seems to be based on strange logic. Those who believe that [white] southerners who fly the Confederate flag do so because of their racism will scarcely be comforted by Schedler's reminder that not all southerners are white.

While the essays are of uneven quality, this collection is essential reading for all those interested in how southern history and politics interact in the highly contested arena of race and memory.

JOAN MARIE JOHNSON
University of Cincinnati