Georgian & Confederate Vexillology

{{The following is a reproduction of an old Hit Coffee post, reproduced because I have recently seen a few people get it wrong.}}

Outside the South (and commonly inside it) people have some mistaken impressions about the flags of the Confederacy. The most commonly attributed flag was never actually the flag of the would-be nation:

The above is the Navy Battle Flag, the Southern Cross, the Battle Flag (or an elongated version of it), the Rebel Flag, or the Confederate (Navy) Jack. The recognizable emblem would be used on later flags, but what we consider “The Confederate Flag” has mostly persisted not because it was the official flag of the Confederacy, but rather because it is the most instantly recognizable. The official flag of the Confederacy was considerably more forgettable:

That would be the Stars & Bars, which was the official flag of the Confederacy until people began confusing it with the American flag on the battle field. So they replaced it with a white flag that was subsequently confused with a surrender flag and then, about the time they were actually surrendering, they put a red bar on it.

But enough about the Confederacy for a moment, let’s talk about Georgia. In 1956, Georgia replaced three horizontal bars on their flag with the Confederate emblem. It doesn’t take a whole lot to figure out why, in 1956, Georgia might be so motivated. Flash forward forty years and Georgians are stunned and outraged to discover that their black population doesn’t so much like their state flag including an emblem from an era that, to say the least, was not one they were particularly nostalgic for.

Eventually something was going to have to give, so at the turn of the century they designed what is considered by flag experts to be the most poorly designed flag in history. It allowed the Confederacy-boosters to keep the emblem somewhere on the flag, but kept it as small as possible and part of the old Georgia among a collection of mini-flags below the state emblem. Pro-Dixie whites were angry cause the Confederate emblem was so small. Black folks weren’t satisfied cause it was still there.

So they went back to the drawing board. It was seeming as though it was going to be impossible for the flag designers to come up with something that could please everybody. Then somebody got a clever idea.

Black folks don’t mind it because it doesn’t have the emblem. Pro-Dixie types like it cause it’s their little inside joke. The design of one and the number of stars from the other. Brilliant.