Post Author: Mary Challman
The spread of Southernization in the 1970s caused the widespread use of an important social and cultural icon: the Confederate, or “rebel,” flag. This was an important aspect of redneck culture that saw highly publicized use on the Madison College/JMU campus. While it could be said that the flying of the rebel flag showed the existence of a vibrant neo-Confederate population on campus, there is simply no evidence to support that claim. The use of the rebel flag in the new context of redneck culture in the 1970s represented something entirely different from its traditional message of racism and states’ rights. The flying of the Confederate flag represented an ideal of political individualism that was as lost as the cause for which the flag was originally used. This idea was reflected elsewhere in the reddening of America in the 1970s, and was an idea that saw support amongst the Republican Party as it grew in size and power (Schulman, 117). The flag also represented the true loss of the American South that was only then being repaired. The loss of the close-knit agrarian society with the industrial development of the South and the loss that many Southern families faced after the Civil War saw its representation in the flying of the rebel flag. Students on the Madison College/JMU campus even went so far as to dress up as Confederate soldiers as a way of remembrance of their Southern heritage, as seen in the above image. Additionally, and probably the aspect of the Confederate flag that was most appropriate to a college campus, was the representation of the flag as a concept of sheer rebellion – “raisin’ hell” for the sake of raisin’ hell (Horwitz, 81). This rebellious aspect of the flag and of redneck culture as a whole is what most likely appealed to the adolescent students of Madison College/JMU.
Fraternities in particularly featured the Confederate flag in many of their images. The above image shows Phi Kappa Beta flying the rebel flag in their yearbook photo in 1973. The below picture depicts a group of young men, presumably a fraternity, displaying the Confederate flag in their yearbook picture from 1979. Because the flag was so well-used in images of fraternities and with very little context of heritage or historical remembrance, it can be implied that the flag was being flown merely to show the organization’s support for youthful rebellion and the redneck culture that was seen throughout the nation in the 1970s.
Works Cited
Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
James Madison University. The Bluestone. 1973. http://archive.org/details/bluestone197365jame
James Madison University. The Bluestone. 1976. http://archive.org/details/bluestone197668jame
James Madison University. The Bluestone. 1979. http://archive.org/details/bluestone197971jame
Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001.