Big Boom

After the Reconstruction until the 1940’s, the Confederate flag as a symbol was not used often. At least, it was not the symbol of rebellion but the ‘South’ and its traditions. “The Confederate veteran generation insured the survival of the battle flag as an official symbol of several southern states”.
However, the 1940’s brought about many changes in several realms.  As Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman “tilted toward the party’s liberal wing at the expense of the conservative south”, the Confederate battle flag became the symbol for defending states’ rights. More and more people carried the flag with them in conventions, during protests. These years served as a rediscovery of the flag with harsh ideological message. “The 1950s fad completed the flag’s transformation into symbol with a myriad contemporary associations”.

Legalized segregation was an essential element of the states’ rights for many.  As the civil rights movements started to evolve, the flag was not a symbol of the south anymore. “The significance of the flag fad was not the flag’s popularity in the South but the enormous, seemingly inexplicable, popularity of the flag in the North. Continuing the trend begun in 1948, Confederate flags outsold U.S. flags in stores all over America, an southern flag dealers received many orders from the –north and the West coast”. It seemed that everybody shared the craze for the banner with or without having deep meanings read into it. Obviously, the 1950’s were about consumerism, trends, and the media, of which all underpinned the spread of the popularity of the flag.

Of course, the 1960’s has changed everything. But since the Confederate flag was so popular and widespread in the previous decade, the further development of the symbol was plausible and inevitable.