The Problem of Confederate Symbols: A Thirteenth Amendment Approach

Abstract

The Thirteenth Amendment, the first of the Reconstruction Era Amendments, represented the Union's deep seated commitment to end the "badges and incidents of servitude." It was an unadulterated call to abandon injustices that had made blacks outsiders in the country they helped build and whose economy they helped sustain. Thus the overthrow of the Confederacy also vanquished hereditary slavery, which ruined countless lives. And, while little used today, the Thirteenth Amendment has tremendous potential to continue to be a powerful battering ram against any persistent vestiges of servitude.

The Confederate battle flag is one of the remaining vestiges of the ante-bellum South. It symbolizes a government whose ideology included the commitment to maintain a stratified society where only whites enjoyed freedom's bounties. The Confederate flag is a badge of servitude. I argue that states that have adopted it into their flags--most prominently, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina--perpetuate the Confederacy' s ideals of white supremacy. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, skinheads, White Aryan Resistance, and other white supremacist organizations continue to use that symbol to demonstrate their commitment to Confederate dogma. My thesis is that glorifying Confederate symbols on official state property should be prohibited pursuant to the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits all relics of servitude, including state sponsored displays meant to laud a breakaway republic which idealized and waged war to perpetuate black slavery.

Keywords: Thirteenth Amendment, Confederate symbols, Confederate flag, Slavery, Constitutional Law, Reconstruction Era Amendments

JEL Classification: D63,J7, J73, J71, J78, K1, K19, K30, K42