Pic of the Day

(AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File, April 14, 1964)

(AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, File, April 14, 1964)

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31 comments… add one
  • Johnny_Reb_1865 Aug 8, 2014 @ 17:59
    • Kevin Levin Aug 9, 2014 @ 2:22

      I am well aware that the Klan has a history of using the Confederate flag during marches, but I fail to see the point. The Stars and Stripes is our nation’s flag. It has been used for many different purposes to make any number of statements about national identity. It is a work in progress as is the nation as a whole. The Confederate flag does not play the same role. It’s not our nation’s flag. It was identified, however, with a failed nation that was established precisely to extend and protect the institution of slavery. You may choose to deny that, but the problem is that more and more people are willing to look at that squarely in the face.

      The United States flag may have flown over a slave-owning nation, but it also abolished slavery and established civil rights, etc.

  • Mike Rogers Aug 8, 2014 @ 11:41

    Late to this party, but as soon as I saw the “Claypool Tavern” sign, I was pretty sure this was Indianapolis as Andrew Raker confirmed. The picture location is probably less than 5 miles from Crown Hill Cemetery where, according to http://www.civilwarcenter.olemiss.edu/cemeteries_USCT.html 30 USCT soldiers are buried as well as Gov. O P Morton, General Canby, and General Streight.

  • John Heiser Aug 8, 2014 @ 9:46

    Borderruffian forgot one carried by a nice young white man from Texas: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/10/14/ugly-rebel-yell-in-front-of-the-white-house/

    • Kevin Levin Aug 8, 2014 @ 9:49

      I am sure it was unintentional. 🙂

    • Forester Aug 8, 2014 @ 22:41

      That wasn’t a “Rebel yell.” He was cheering for the cause of equality! :p

  • Eric A. Jacobson Aug 8, 2014 @ 6:11

    C’mon Kevin, you’re just confusing good folks like Josephine. You trickster. A Northern white male of the 20th century holding the flag of the Southern white soldier of the 19th century in protest against blacks simply asking that the promise of equality be kept. I mean really, this isn’t about the battle flag, Kevin. It is about Northerners being racist, too. I mean gosh, pretty soon you and Connie will be co-hosting a new blog. 🙂

  • BorderRuffian Aug 8, 2014 @ 4:48
    • Kevin Levin Aug 8, 2014 @ 5:49

      Yes, that flag has been used to represent a myriad of different positions through the years. I use the first one in class when I teach the history of the civil rights movement and the Boston Bus Boycott.

      The difference is the stars and strips is my flag and everyone else in this country. Like the nation itself its meaning is a work-in-progress unlike the Confederate flag. There is a reason why the individual in this photograph is holding a Confederate flag and like it or not that reason goes back to the founding of the Confederate States of America. That history is etched in stone.

      • Forester Aug 8, 2014 @ 6:21

        A “work-in-progress” flag. I like that.

        The US flag has had years to grow and evolve because the USA is a continuously evolving and changing nation. Old Glory once flew over slave ships, but now it flies over a black president. Living, breathing nations are continually reborn every day. But the Confederate flag is locked in it’s time and context … a permanent relic of 1860-65.

    • Marian Latimer Aug 8, 2014 @ 17:43

      Ah, yes, the good old days of the anti-bussing crowd in Pontiac. I have vivid memories and dear old Irene McCabe, who I believe died a very painful death from cancer, made no secret of being racist and a shrew as well. I think she came to regret it, but I’ve forgotten. If I can stay awake, I’ll do some poking around on the inter-webs and get back to you.

      • Marian Latimer Aug 9, 2014 @ 18:31

        I did a little look around on Irene McCabe and it seems she was a big supporter of George Wallace (didn’t he soften his stance at the end of his life and even reconcile with those he hurt?) and her group was NAG, for National Action Group. Sigh, I don’t recall her mellowing but who knows? She lost in the end, I suppose, but perhaps the jury is still out on that.

        • Andrew Raker Aug 10, 2014 @ 5:17

          Yes, Wallace did publicly change his views on race, asked for forgiveness in the late 70s, and appointed two African-Americans to his cabinet in his last term as governor, in the 80s. I also seem to re

          With him, though, it’s hard to tell when he was being sincere and when he was being a consummate politician. He was a moderate on racial issued during his first run for Governor, which he felt cost him the position, which led to him taking the harder line he became famous for.

  • Forester Aug 7, 2014 @ 22:12

    Clearly this compassionate white man has joined the march to SUPPORT the blacks. He wants all black people to enjoy the equal rights that his ancestors gave to the Black Confederate soldiers (before the tyrant Lincoln came in and stopped them).

    The CBF is a banner of harmony and equality, flown at hundreds of Civil Rights marches. The proof is in pictures all over the Internet. You’re a hypocrite, Kevin, and you need a history lesson.

    You need to stop reading those pesky peer-reviewed scholarly sources written by Neo-Yankees and Lincoln Gatekeepers. Start visiting the websites run by random people with only a kindergarten education. They haven’t been indoctrinated by the P.C. establishment … and therefore, they know the TRUTH.

    Heritage, not History,

  • Josephine Bass Aug 7, 2014 @ 16:30

    Those blacks are not invaders from NYC – not our neighbors! They have crossed our State Borders with bad intentions, Allowed to be on our land only because the Washington
    Government is backing them up and they know they can get away with breaking our STATE LAW. Too bad MLK didn’t come to prayer breakfast, break bread and ask for us to change in a polite manner. I am sure if they had some decent folks that wanted to go to our school and they had shown they were willing to study and learn we would have allowed it. Gee Whiz didn’t we have them in our homes everyday eating at our table, taking care of our babies. The only conclusion is the Socialist Marxist attitude MLK had and I guess he invited these thugs into our community. We are never going to look at it the way you do kevin levin the hyprocrite.

    • Kevin Levin Aug 7, 2014 @ 16:39

      The only conclusion is the Socialist Marxist attitude MLK had and I guess he invited these thugs into our community. We are never going to look at it the way you do kevin levin the hyprocrite.

      That is the understatement of the year, Josephine. 🙂 Be well.

    • Andrew Raker Aug 7, 2014 @ 17:13

      A quick Google image search shows that this photograph was taken in Indianapolis, Indiana. (You can even kind of make out Indianapolis on the first gentleman’s sign.) Considering her stance on state rights, I can only assume that Josephine thinks that George Wallace should have stayed south of the Ohio River in 1964, instead of visiting Indianapolis.

      • Kevin Levin Aug 7, 2014 @ 17:19

        Hi Andrew,

        You got it. Here is the link, where I came across the image. Definitely adds to our understanding of the photograph. Clearly the white man knew exactly what flag to fly to make his point.

        As for Josephine…well…

        • Andrew Raker Aug 7, 2014 @ 17:48

          Thanks for the link.

          I’d love to know more about the man holding the flag. We haven’t had the best track record of race relations in our history (the 1854 state Constitution banning the entry of African-Americans into the state being the most striking example), and there was a secesh movement here during the war, so he could very well be a Hoosier acting out of that tradition. But we also received migrants from the South throughout the 20th century, and he could just as easily be a Southern transplant – one of those agitators who crossed state lines. Either way, it’s a good example of how complicated issues of race and of remembering the war are. Thanks for posting it!

          • Kevin Levin Aug 7, 2014 @ 18:10

            Thanks for the comments.

          • Jessie Alan Sanford Aug 7, 2014 @ 19:36

            I was going to say, my ass but come on folks how in the hell can you blame this on the South? You folkes have no honor.

      • Marian Latimer Aug 7, 2014 @ 18:08

        George Wallace had quite the following in my former home state of Michigan. I was a young thing so I can’t recall where he placed in the primary that year, but I have vivid memories of having my backside chewed by my father (ok, he was from TN) for speaking against him. It was quite the lecture.

        Bigotry is not exclusive to the south. The KKK had and may well still have a stronghold the next county over from the state capital. I believe as recently as just two years ago the local grand dragon (who is up and years and had some standing with the Klan nationally) lived just a few miles out of Howell and had his name on his mailbox. In fact, there was supposed to be an auction of KKK memorabilia there a few years back and they could not figure out why people were upset. The auction got cancelled, but I believe there was even a Klan museum there as well.

        • Andrew Raker Aug 7, 2014 @ 18:59

          In looking up more about how Wallace did in the Indiana primaries that year, I found this gem of a story, told by Matthew Welsh, the governor and stand-in for LBJ on the ballot that year, told in his article, “Civil Rights and the Primary Election of 1964 in Indiana”: “There was another, more personal, irony for me. While Governor Wallace traveled north to excoriate the federal government and its “interference” in the lives of citizens and the rights of states, I was completing a series of personal diplomacy trips into eight of the states of the Confederacy as part of the Civil War Centennial observance, returning to their governors captured Confederate battle flags found in the Indiana World War Memorial. Graciously accepting the flags in appropriate public ceremonies, the governors each had spoken of the bonds of common purpose that now held us in union as one people and a great nation. There would be no opportunity to return the battle flag to Alabama.”

          Welsh’s campaign also hired a photographer in Montgomery to take a picture showing the CBF from the dome, flying higher than the US flag on a staff on the lawn.

          I don’t think Welsh’s victory in the primaries can be credited to flag politics, but it was part of how he positioned himself as being in favor of civil rights, and as part of the Democratic Party’s mainstream, unlike Wallace.

        • Jessie Alan Sanford Aug 7, 2014 @ 19:52

          Thank you for your canid words we as Southerns in the deep South love our South more than life it sef.

    • The other Susan Aug 8, 2014 @ 1:31

      I’m going to take President Obama’s advice on this one.
      “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk,”

    • Christopher Shelley Aug 8, 2014 @ 7:14

      Josephine Bass said: “Too bad MLK didn’t come to prayer breakfast, break bread and ask for us to change in a polite manner.”

      What, like the time in 1955 when MLK met with the city fathers in Montgomery to discuss civil rights? His attempt at dialogue was rejected, and the MIA was forced to boycott. And then MLK’s house was bombed.

      Or the time he tried to negotiate with the city fathers in Birmingham in 1963? That little attempt at a “prayer breakfast” went really well, didn’t it?

      Yes, it’s too bad all those black “invaders” crossed Your State Borders, where they were allowed only because of Washington, to force “you” to admit black equality.

      This is like a cartoon. All we need is an “uppity niggras” comment to make it complete.

      • Kevin Levin Aug 8, 2014 @ 7:21

        Don’t worry about Josephine.

        I only approve her comments every once in a while, because, unlike so many others, she at least signs her name.

        • Woodrowfan Aug 8, 2014 @ 15:00

          Until I saw the name at the end I would have sworn it was someone making a sarcastic comment….

  • Jimmy Dick Aug 7, 2014 @ 15:35

    My, that looks an awful lot like a CBF in that guy’s hand. Hmm, you don’t think he is …..?

  • Rob Baker Aug 7, 2014 @ 13:14

    All that’s missing is a “heritage not hate” sign. 😉

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