Rebuttal to Hyatt's Hokum
by Steve Scroggins

Mr. Hyatt,
This letter is in response to your "Battle over a Symbol" commentary published May 2nd.

While some of your commentary had merit----the Barnes flag was unquestionably UGLY and Sonny did LIE--- I wanted to point out some glaring omissions and fallacies in your narrative thrust to "prove" that the 1956 flag change was motivated by "racial malice" or defiance.

For many years now, a number of writers looked into the atmosphere of the time, the controversy surrounding desegregation and federal court orders (Brown v. Board of Education - 1954), and then leaped to the conclusion that the 1956 flag change was sending a signal to Washington, D.C., and all of Georgia's citizens. It's just too much of a coincidence...right?

Think about it. In the 1950s, almost all of Georgia's politicians were open and avowed segregationists. If they wanted to be elected, they said they supported segregation. That's how it was. And they made NO SECRET of it....there was no need for coded messages, no need for cover stories.

IF....again, IF there were some who wanted to make the 1956 flag change a "message" about segregation, don't you think they would have shouted it at the first reporter to come along? Don't you think there would be dozens of quotes and public statements pronouncing that "this flag change sends a message" yada yada yada ???

I challenge you, sir, to find one...just ONE. Go ahead, look. I can tell you that the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has already looked in the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s when Miller raised the question again. They didn't find any linkage between the flag change and racial malice or desire to maintain segregation.

Dang! That's inconvenient, isn't it? But it doesn't stop writers like you and many dozens of others from repeating the Big Lie as if it were the Gospel. Now, let's add some historical CONTEXT, shall we?

The change to the 1956 flag was first proposed by Judge John Sammons Bell. As a boy, he attended Confederate Veterans reunions with his grandfather. He advocated the 1956 change to honor Georgia's Confederate veterans, because the St. Andrews Cross was more recognizable as a Confederate symbol. Bell emphatically denied any motivation other than a desire to honor and memorialize veterans. Judge Bell is quoted as saying, "Anybody who says anything to the contrary is wrong or perpetuating a willful lie."

You, sir, are perpetuating a willful lie with your article published May 2nd.

Was Judge Bell a segregationist? Yes, but you know what? So were the overwhelming majority of the people in Georgia; no, make that America, in 1956. The vaunted ladies of the UDC who opposed the flag change? Segregationist. The 32 assemblymen who voted against changing to the 1956 flag? All segregationists of one type or another. The editorialist of The Macon Telegraph who advised against the 1956 flag change in their 6-Feb-1956 issue? Also, segregationist.

There were varying degrees of segregationist thought from the supremacist White Citizens Council to the more mainstream "separate but equal" and other variations of it. Describing this range of views is really another story. This is not an attempt to justify them or argue that the majority was right.

The point is that the people pushing BOTH SIDES of the flag issue in 1956 all favored maintaining segregation in one form or another. Segregation was the status quo and very few Americans or Georgians favored ending it in the mid-fifties. They would NOT have used "code words" such as "culture" and "heritage" as so many writers suggest because there was no need for such "codes." If you were an elected official and you wanted to get more votes you would have shouted the fact that you supported segregation (and many did), and if you wanted a special bill to pass with broad public support you would have somehow linked it with support for segregation!

In no instance did any supporter of the Georgia Flag change of 1956 ever associate that change with segregation or link it with defiance to the federal government (another popular election point). Every newspaper article from 1955-1957 from Georgia newspapers kept at the federal archives in Athens, Georgia, has been searched and none ever associate the 1956 State Flag with these issues. Go ahead, look yourself.

Gov. S. Marvin Griffin (1955-1959)----who was a champion of segregation and would support it in any way possible--- never even lifted a finger to help assure that the flag change would be enacted. If the flag was changed for segregation reasons he would have pushed the change with all his might just to show defiance to Washington.

The very fact that no politician of any ilk ever associated the 1956 flag change one way or another to one of the most visible political/social issues of the day that had broad voter support (namely segregation) lends credence to the fact that the State Flag was changed for memorial purposes only.

One did not carry on a "whisper campaign" for segregation in 1956! To argue otherwise is illogical.

DENMARK GROOVER
A whole lot of hay was made over Denmark Groover's AMBIGUOUS public statements in 2001, when he was called from his deathbed to repay some old political debts and make a statement regarding Gov. Barnes' proposed flag change. As noted, the AJC had been looking for this "smoking gun" for decades...and now they had it. Ha!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) carried a story on Jan.25, 2001 which quoted Groover at length. Groover said that in 1956, the new flag was passed by the Senate 43-1. By the time the bill reached the floor of the House, opposition had developed, primarily from the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC preferred to retain the pre-1956 flag because of its resemblance to the 1st National flag of the Confederacy. As traditionalists, the UDC didn't want the battle flag involved in any official modern government or to be perceived in any way as a symbol in any modern politics.

Groover is then quoted as saying about the 1956 flag change,

“I presented the matter to the House, and because of the opposition, I probably used some rhetoric indicating that the new flag was to symbolize our defiance of the action of the federal judiciary on matters of race.”

Battle over a symbol
Confederate flag still source of political fights
by Richard Hyatt
Staff Writer

Marvin Griffin could play the fool, but he could also play politics.

"There will be no mixing of the races in Georgia anywhere, anytime as long as I'm governor," he proclaimed to legislators in 1956. "All attempts to mix the races, whether they're in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in public conveyances or in any other area of close public contact... peril the mores of the South."

Into this world was born a new Georgia flag.

And what a world it was.

Two months before the all-white Legislature convened, Griffin threatened to keep Georgia Tech home from the Sugar Bowl. He couldn't have them playing the University of Pittsburgh and its black fullback.

"The South stands at Armageddon," Griffin said. "The battle is joined. One break in the dike and the relentless seas will rush in and destroy us."

The Yellow Jackets played. So did Pitt's Bob Grier. And Armageddon didn't come.

But it was close.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court called for an end to segregated schools. In 1955, a Baptist preacher nobody knew led a boycott of city buses in Montgomery. All over the South, blacks pushed officials to let them play on public golf courses or swim in public pools.

Politicians felt the clock was ticking in the fourth quarter, and they didn't know what play to call.

So they made themselves a flag.

People today cling to that 1956 flag as if Robert E. Lee himself stitched it. It stirs souls like a chorus of "Dixie."

It scared a governor who wanted to take it down, defeated a governor who did and elected a governor who didn't restore it.

Its story is worth remembering.

A new flag

Few headlines were written.

Senators voted 41-3. The House voted 107-32. Sixty-six members sat it out.

Georgia had a new state flag, replacing an 1878 banner created by a senator who fought in the Civil War.

Denmark Groover of Macon was a member of the House in 1956. He said the flag was introduced in advance of the Civil War centennial in 1960 and that its design came from John Sammons Bell, chairman of the state Democratic Party.

"Of course I can't say that there were absolutely no feelings against what was going on at the time, that Brown v. the Board of Education didn't influence John Bell's decision to do what he did. I never discussed it with him," Groover related in a biography of former Gov. Zell Miller.

He also remembered people feeling they were being trampled on, and being reverent to the generation that came out of the War Between the States.

"What was going on in the 1950s seemed to be an attempt at a destruction of those in the 1860s," Groover said, "and an assumption that the War Between the States was fought wholly and entirely in order to preserve slavery -- which was not true."

The memory of Rep. James Mackay of DeKalb County was harsher.

"It was like the gun rack in the back of a pickup truck," Mackay said. "It telegraphed a message."

Zell's stand

In 1993, at his peak of power, Zell Miller set out to eliminate a flag that had come to stand for slavery and defiance.

Georgia's business establishment cheered. The Super Bowl was coming in 1994 and the Olympics in 1996. They did not want that flag flying.

It was too much like the Confederate flag, long ago usurped by the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other white supremacy groups. The old banner sent contemporary messages.

Miller couldn't predict the reaction. Good ole boys didn't want anybody tampering with their Rebel heritage or their history.

Forget?

They couldn't.

Or wouldn't.

Miller wanted a flag for a new generation of Georgians.

"Of all the arguments that have been made for keeping this flag, the most infuriating to me is the contention that if we don't we will somehow forget the sacrifices made by those who fought for the Confederacy," he told the legislature. "We will not forget. We cannot forget. Our graveyards, our literature and many of our own family histories will forever keep alive the memory of those who died for the Confederacy -- and the memory of those whose freedom from slavery depended on the Confederacy's defeat."

He recalled 1956.

"They were prepared to eliminate our public schools and even prohibit our college football teams from competing in bowl games -- in order to maintain segregated schools, segregated public transportation, segregated drinking fountains and segregated recreational facilities. We have long since repudiated every element of those shameful 1956 days of defiance -- except the flag they created."

Miller asked legislators to help him "give bigotry no sanction, and persecution no assistance."

The No. 1 issue

Zell Miller was eloquent. Pete Robinson was scared.

The senator from Columbus sponsored Miller's bill to change the flag in 1994. He and Wayne Garner of Carrolton caught the brunt of the outcry. Receiving threats on their families, they asked the State Patrol to escort their children to school.

People said Robinson didn't understand how much that banner meant to Georgia. Only he did. His great-uncle served in the Senate of 1956 that changed it. His great-great-grandfather served in the House of 1878 that created the original flag.

"So don't tell me I don't understand," Robinson said.

His pleas attracted 12 votes.

Groover addressed the House. As the only member who was there in 1956, he had something to say.

"I went to the Legislature when segregation was the No. 1 political issue in this state," he said. "I was born and raised in a country town in South Georgia and anybody, any white, in my generation who told you he didn't have prejudice was a liar. However, one of the benefits of my being here and living through those changing times is not political advance but the opportunity to move away from some of that prejudice. I didn't like Martin Luther King Jr. He made people like myself look at ourselves and to some extent we didn't like what we saw."

And the flag still flew.

Cheap placemat

Roy Barnes' flag was ugly.

But its demise didn't come because it looked like a cheap placemat.

Barnes, a former member of the House and Senate, succeeded Miller. He kept his ideas about the flag under wraps. Only key legislators were privy to the plan. Others found out what was up in 2001, when Rep. Calvin Smyre of Columbus, chairman of the Rules Committee, added the flag bill to that day's calendar.

Businessman Cecil Alexander designed Barnes' flag. Its blue background included small replicas of flags that had flown over the state. In the Legislature, the words "In God We Trust" were added.

No one noticed at the time, but Sen. Sonny Perdue of tiny Bonaire voted against Barnes' design, just as he had Miller's.

"Boot Barnes" became the battle cry of flag lovers, commonly referred to as flaggers. They set out to make Barnes a one-term governor. They wanted him run out and the old flag run up.

The 2002 election was between Barnes and Perdue, a onetime walk-on quarterback at the University of Georgia. In that campaign, flaggers hounded Barnes at every stop. Perdue, promising a vote on the '56 flag, was their boy.

Barnes went down with his flag.

Choice of two flags

Flaggers had a new slogan: "Sonny Lied."

At Perdue's victory celebration, the '56 flag was waving. Asked about the flaggers' presence, the governor-elect denied he had invited them.

Gov. Perdue gave Georgians a chance to vote. But nowhere on the ballot was there a chance to vote for that beloved 1956 flag.

The choice: "Roy's flag" or "Sonny's flag."

For the third time in 29 months, Georgia flew a new flag: "Sonny's flag."

Flaggers called his maneuvering "devious, dishonest manipulation of a political issue." He became their target.

Barnes was honored with the 2003 Profile in Courage Award, given by Ted and Caroline Kennedy. In his acceptance, he invoked the names of Robert E. Lee, Martin Luther King Jr., Stonewall Jackson, John Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

He also shared a story about his wife, Marie, and her red convertible, the one with a fading "Barnes for Governor" sticker.

She was at a traffic light when a pickup truck stopped beside her. The driver glanced at her bumper sticker and said: "I'm sorry you were for Barnes. You know he's a traitor to his race."

Barnes acknowledged that "race is just below the surface of our society and on what it means to be from the South."

"The discussion is whether the Confederate Battle Flag, the St. Andrews Cross, is the only acceptable symbol to honor an era when our ancestors fought with valor... even though they fought for a cause that was wrong."

www.ledger-enquirer.com/324/story/25793.html