Today’s Battle Over the Confederate Flag Has Nothing to Do With the Civil War

Popular Well Beyond the South, It Is Now a Modern Symbol of White Grievance and Nostalgia for Crumbling Hierarchies

Three years ago, Dylann Roof murdered nine people in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and renewed a long-running debate about the meaning of the Confederate battle flag. Since then, the discussion about flying the flag in public places—as well as ongoing fights about the removal of Confederate monuments—has been framed as the persistence of historic passions. This interpretation is deeply and dangerously misleading: In fact, the flag’s meaning has changed significantly over time, and the contemporary conflict about the flag should be seen more as a dispute …

Why Has America Been So Reluctant to ‘Own’ the South?

A Preeminent Historian Explores How a Region Central to U.S. Identity Gets Written Out of the National Narrative

James C. Cobb is Emeritus B. Phinizy Spalding distinguished professor in the history of the American South at the University of Georgia. He has published 13 books and many articles …

The Confederate Flag’s Gone, But Slavery’s Still Here

150 Years After Emancipation, the U.S. is Still Struggling to End Human Trafficking

What is slavery, and what does it have to do with America today?

Most people in the U.S. understand that slavery was the condition black people were forced into before …

Why Governor Haley Took Down the Confederate Flag

Removing the Divisive Symbol Was About Business, Not Ideals

The most striking aspect of the Bamberg, South Carolina, grade school class photo (circa 1980) is not the nine black youngsters scattered among the 23 white pupils. Bamberg schools had …