Not Just the Flag

Southern states didn’t respond to the civil rights movement only by placing Confederate flags on their statehouses or integrating the Stars and Bars into their state flag. They also named public buildings after Confederate leaders during these years. Take the elementary schools of Austin:

It was no coincidence that three other schools bearing the names of notable Confederates popped up in Austin during the civil rights movement, following the federal court-ordered desegregation of public schools.

Those local schools — Sidney Lanier High School, Albert Sidney Johnston High School and John H. Reagan High School — were built at a time when schools were being named after Confederate war heroes across Texas and the South. All three of the high schools are located in neighborhoods with large minority populations.

Some say the names were meant to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. Others saw the push to glorify the Confederacy as a deliberate slap in the face to minorities and the federal government after the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision Brown v. Board of Education.

That was the symbolic resistance of the Southern state to the imposition of the federal civil rights legislation. Standing on state’s rights and standing on the Lost Cause principle, they went about honoring the Confederacy,” said Frank de la Teja, a Texas State University professor who was appointed Texas state historian between 2007 and 2009 by former Gov. Rick Perry. “And by the way, Austin was an extremely racist town.”

There’s a lot of anti-civil rights Confederate symbolism that needs reversal in the South. The flags are only the first step.