Three months ago, the state started providing license plates with a faint image of the Confederate battle flag covering up the Georgia peaches.
The news brought the requisite controversy. Southern heritage supporters said they were simply touting their culture and showing their pride. Opponents said the flag plates carried a racist tinge and was one more reason the state sometimes resembles Mississippi.
The controversy went national, as these things do – Northerners love reading stories about Southerners squabbling over the Civil War. But, like the battle over changing the state flag a decade earlier, the hubbub over the new license plates has been a good thing for the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The redesign caused the number of SCV specialty tags to more than double, from 230 in January to 484 in March, said Tim Pilgrim, the state division’s adjutant and bean counter who receives $10 for each specialty plate.
The license plate (“tags” are something scratching inside your collar) redesign is part of a campaign by the group to get its take on the Long-Ago Unpleasantness. This year is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War tearing through Georgia, and the organization is trying to whip up support by strategically flying colossal Rebel flags on highways and by sponsoring radio ads.
One of the ads has a sweet-sounding Southern lady giving a political-historical pitch, saying that courageous Southerners “fought to defend their homes and families against aggressive invasion by Federal troops.”
Yikes, I almost felt ashamed to be from Illinois, whose license plates read, “Land of Lincoln.”
“All we wanted was to be left alone,” the sweet lady went on, adding that Abe Lincoln wouldn’t let the Southern states do what the Founding Fathers did because he wanted to hang onto the tariffs and taxes the South generated.
I had to listen to the ad a second time because I wanted to make sure she was saying Lincoln, not Obama.
Ray McBerry, the group’s spokesman who ran an ill-fated “states’ rights” campaign for governor in 2010, wouldn’t name the radio stations where the group was playing the ads, fearing that they’d get harassed.
The increased sale of Confederate plates shows “people are voting with their wallets,” said McBerry, who then dealt the underdog card. “In spite of the fact that they can’t or shouldn’t be proud of their Southern heritage, they still are. In this political climate, Southerners are getting beat up by the politicians and media alike.”
Fifty years ago, crowds gathered on Peachtree Street for parades commemorating on the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. He said folks in the crowd, both black and white, waved Rebel flags. There’s archival film footage out there, he said.
A quick rummage through the Internet located no such footage. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, but those parades also coincided with different types of parades – civil rights marches.
What has changed since then, where black Southerners aren’t waving the battle flag as they supposedly once did?
“It’s those people who have moved down here who don’t understand our culture, those are the people who are most antagonistic,” he said.
Could you be more specific?
“It’s from Yankees,” he added.
Rev. Samuel Mosteller, who heads the Georgia chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the controversy seems to work for the SCV, so he didn’t want to say much.
“They’re trying to raise a controversy in election years but I’m not going to play politics with their flag,” said Mosteller, a retired Army major.
But, he couldn’t help himself. “They should have been hung for treason but Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson decided not to hang them. If anyone wanted to champion a Lost Cause, let them.”
The Georgic SCV has about 3,100 members, making it the nation’s largest state division. That’s down from 3,600, when the fight over the state flag pumped up the group’s ranks.
Jack Bridwell, who has been the SCV’s state commander for 12 years and who fought a losing battle in trying to get the battle emblem back on the state flag, designed the new license plate. Originally, he wanted the image from Stone Mountain on the plate but said the contractor that runs the park has been afforded the rights to Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, as well as their granite horses.
He is pleased to see the new license plate has been a hit. “It’s been going real well, thanks to y’all,” he said, referring to us rabble-rousing, shinola stirrers.
Bridwell, a former Vietnam veteran, will leave his post next month and is happy the membership has remained north of 3,000 during his stint.
People gain and lose interest in the organization and members steadily die off. “I’m 69 and sometimes I’m one of the young ones,” he said of meetings.
Still, he sees promise for the Lost Cause. He recently swore in a 13-year-old.
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