PD Editorial: Time to retire Confederate battle flag

The Civil War ended 150 years ago, the final battle waged May 13, 1865, at Palmito Ranch in Texas.

Yet as the nation marks the sesquicentennial of its darkest hour, the Confederate battle flag still flies tall.

Some insist it’s a tribute to Southern heritage. However, for most Americans, the stars and bars represent a war waged in defense of the abominable practice of slavery.

It’s the banner of avowed racists including Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African Americans at an historic black church in Charleston, S.C. in pursuit of a twisted plan to start a race war.

Roof posed for pictures with the Confederate battle flag and a gun before the June 17 attack. In the aftermath, a South Carolina law prevented Gov. Nikki Haley from lowering the banner to half-staff, along with the U.S. and state flags on the Capitol grounds, in honor of the victims.

That image may reverse the tide on how public institutions treat this divisive symbol.

The battle flag first appeared at South Carolina’s statehouse in 1938 after Congress debated a proposal to make lynching a federal crime, according to an account in the New York Times. It was raised briefly in 1954 to protest Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing school segregation, and placed atop the statehouse in 1962, when President John Kennedy sought to outlaw poll taxes and literacy tests as prerequisites for voting. The flag was moved to a Confederate memorial on the Capitol grounds in 2000 amid rising protests about its association with racial animus.

On Monday, Haley, joined by South Carolina Sens. Lindsay Graham and Tim Scott, called for its removal from the statehouse grounds. “If we fail to take it down now we’ll pay a price for generations,” Graham said. “We have to get this right.”

Their message resonated. Two days later, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley ordered the flag removed from the Capitol grounds in Montgomery. Meanwhile, Mississippi’s U.S senators called for replacement of the state flag, which includes the Confederate symbol, and the governors of Georgia and Virginia plan to withdraw specialty license plates featuring the flag. Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee are likely to follow.

One state that won’t have to phase out any license plates is Texas, which rejected a stars-and-bars design submitted by a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans and prevailed last week in a legal challenge that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its ruling, the court made an important distinction between public and private speech.

Private speech, including displays of the Confederate battle flag and other symbols, including offensive symbols, are protected by the First Amendment. As are decisions announced this week by Wal-Mart, eBay and Amazon to end sales of Confederate-themed merchandise. But the government isn’t required to give its imprimatur to private views.

As Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court, the state cannot compel the Sons of Confederate Veterans to convey its message, and the group “cannot force Texas to include a Confederate battle flag on its specialty license plates.”

The Civil War belongs to history. It’s past time to stop flying one of its most potent symbols at our public institutions. As a White House statement said: “The Confederate flag has a place in America. And that place is in museums.”