Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 12:49:03 CST

From: Ellen Johnson Ellen.Johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]WKU.EDU

Subject: GA flag (nothing to do with lang)



This has nothing to do with dialect, so you may want to use your

delete key.



As David Johns said, the current Georgia flag, with the Confederate

battle flag incorporated, was adopted in the 1950s. The rest of the

story is that this new flag design was created by a legislature

expressing its rebellion against the federal government, which had

required desegregation of schools in the 1954 Supreme Court decision,

Brown v. Board of Education.



The climate of the times is described by Ralph McGill in one of the

best books about the South I have ever read (UGA Press), The South and

the Southerner:

"Never," was what they said in the Deep South, red of face, arms

flailing, or fists clenched, pounding on tables or lecterns. "No

Communist-led court would ever succeed in putting niggers in the

schools."



So the Georgia flag, at least, is not a venerable tradition, but a

blatantly racist statement. Many public schools (among others) no

longer will fly the state flag.



Ellen

ellen.johnson[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]wku.edu

http://www.wku.edu/~ejohnson