Date:  Tue, 28 Oct 1997 14:24:22 -0500
From:  jerry miller <millerj[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]FRANKLINCOLL.EDU>
Subject: Re: GA flag (nothing to do with lang)

Interesting background on the stars and bars in Georgia -- but it raised a
tangential question for me (again, not necessarily related to dialect) about
the rise of the "NEVER" as a slogan for the anti-integrationists.
   In the North (well, Indiana, whose attitudes sometimes make it
difficult to differentiate), I recall the "NOW" buttons (as in "Integration
Now" or "End Segregation Now") appearing first, followed by the reactionary
"NEVER" buttons (I saw an off-duty court bailiff wearing one -- the first
time I'd seen one, and I assumed it was his response to all the "NOW"
buttons and bumper stickers).
   Which came first, NOW or NEVER?

Jerry Miller

At 12:49 PM 10/28/97 CST, you wrote:
>   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
>
>