(03-25-2020 05:21 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-22-2020 01:46 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  https://archive.org/details/Sports-Illus...1962-09-24

Special edition. Cover is Ole Miss cheerleaders in Rebel costumes hoisting Confederate flags.

In 1962 a Confederate Battle Flag flew over the Capitol of every Southern State, just under the Flag of the United States.

In 1962 virtually every Southern male under age 30 had a Confederate Battle Flag for a front license plate on his car and had a big one hanging on the wall over his bed.

In 1962 when children had dirt cold wards (a lot of building in the Suburbs), or had rubber band gun wars they divided into sides based on whether they were born in the North or the South. I remember when we had some kids from California and Oregon and Canada we gave them a Pirate flag and had a third party in the wars..

1962 was an entirely different era and none of those things were out of the ordinary or considered to be racist. History books had pictures of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant on the inside front and back covers.

All of this was considered part of the history and heritage of the nation for good or for ill. The symbols of the past have been misappropriated and made to be offensive instead of just a fact of history.

In the early 60's I was an avid model builder and I painted my models. If I had a model of a BF109 it had a swastika on the tail just like the original. A child building that model today would have the crosses for the wings but no swastika for the tail. PC is the reason why.

Swastikas didn't kill 6 million Jews. Nazi's did. The swastika is an ancient symbol of good fortune in India, and a talisman for many native tribes and not just in the U.S.

We alter reality and falsify truth when we attack symbols which in their time were just fact of history. By banning them we make the symbols, once of losing causes and ideologies, greater in power than they ever were in reality.

Something is fundamentally wrong with this. They should never be feared and always identified with the losing regimes they represented.

A burning cross is an entirely different matter and I can readily accept the banning of such.

But by banning symbols of the past we give them a power that the antisocial will always rally around. I'm just not for that.

But for the purposes of the OP, yes it seems wholly out of place today, but it was mainstream, accepted, and thought nothing of in 1962.

Eisenhower could integrate the armed forces and send the national guard to integrate Little Rock Central High and could also have a picture of Robert E. Lee in the oval office.

There's a reason there is a Ft. Bragg, Ft. Hood, etc. (Confederate generals) along with the former Ft. McPherson in Atlanta (union general who died in the Battle of Atlanta). The army decided to name new forts after generals of both sides to help unite the country. It was a war between brothers. Several of Mary Todd Lincoln's brothers fought on both sides. Abe and Mary Todd mourned when her sister's husband Benjamin Hardin Helm died leading a Confederate Kentucky brigade at Chickamauga.