Welcome back class to lesson #3. Today we will discuss why the Confederate Flag Made a 20th Century Comeback. (thank you to @vareeditandweep for the inquiry):

TL;DR: the popularity of the Confederate battle flag today has more to do with the Civil Rights Movement than the Civil War. The flag became a symbol of opposition to desegregation.

The slightly longer answer? Well... after WW2, around 1948, in opposition to President Truman integrating the army and supporting civil rights legislation, Southern Democrats started the Southern States Rights Party aka the Dixiecrats.

Their official statement upon exiting?

"We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any...

lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program."

Their official logo? The Confederate battle flag:

Oops. My fault. The Confederate battle flag:

Before ‘48, it had appeared occasionally at football games at southern universities (particularly amongst Kappa Alpha members), and usually at soldiers’ reunions or commemorations of Civil War battles; but other than that, it really was not a prominent feature of the South.

In the 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement built up steam, you began to see more and more public displays of the Confederate battle flag. Georgia in 1956 redesigned their state flag to include the Confederate just two years after Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1962, South Carolina put the Confederate battle flag atop the capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina.

It was also raised at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) during protests against integration of schools.

Supporters of the flag's continued use claim it is a symbol of Southern ancestry and heritage as well as representing a distinct and independent cultural tradition of the Southern United States from the rest of the country...

But, as a reminder, the Confederacy literally lasted for only 5 years. There is so much more to Southern culture than what the Confederacy had to offer.