Confederate Battle Flag-KA discussed in magazine article

[cash78mere]

Hello KA's!

I remember a while ago there was a thread where a member said that your nationals agreed to not allow you to use the battle flag as a symbol but I couldn't find the thread.

I thought you might be interested to know that in this month's "North and South--The Official Magazine of the Civil War Society" (Volume 4 Number 7), there is an article called "The Battle Flag--A Brief History of America's Most Controversial Symbol". As an avid Civil War buff, I just started buying all of the Civil War magazines. I have learned many things from these magazines---such as the Stars and Bars is not the real Battle Flag! The real Stars and Bars was deemed to look too much like the Stars and Stripes so they modeled the St. Andrews Cross flag to be the new flag of the Confederacy!

In the middle of the article, they discuss Kappa Alpha Order several times. Here is a part of what was said:

"College football and college campus life in general were apparently the means by which the battle flag evolved from a symbol of Confederate memorial organizations into a popular culture symbol. Instrumental in this process were the members of the Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity founded in 1865 at Washington College--of which a retired general named Robert E. Lee was then president. Consistent with the Order's emphasis on the ideals of southern chivalry, Kappa Alphans in the late 1920s began staging elaborate "Old South" balls and parades, reportedly using Confederate flags. (pg. 54)"

"Certainly the college students who waived it did not regard it so. Student use of the flag at UAlabama in 1948 apparently had nothing to do with shenanigans or tradition. A reporter for the student newspaper noted that the flags hoisted over fraternity row were brought "out of mothballs". The flags would stay outside the fraternity houses, one student insisted, "until the North calls its wolves away from attempting to devour our Southern culture". Significantly, the UA Kappa Alpha fraternity chapter's first Old South Ball, with Confederate flage flying high, was held the spring after the Dixiecrat movement. ..............(p. 55)"


The article goes on to mention KA one more time and also shows a black Kappa Alpha Psi member holding a banner in protest of the flag.

"The Kappa Alpha Order acted more decisively. At the 1951 meeting, the Order's leaders issued a "statement of principles" concerning the flag. "We are aware of and deplore the indiscriminate misuse and abuse of the Battle Flag by those who would make it a political symbol," declared the statement, "and by those who would derive financial gain from it by promoting its sales or using it in advertising their merchandise." "As we were largely responsible for popularizing its display, today so we can help to restore respect for it by promptly disassociating ourselves from all manner of cheap, tawdry and vulgar exhibitions; and by limiting its use among us to such places and occasions as are fit and becoming." The Advisory Council requested that its members cease using the flag n nexkties, caps, automobile windshield stickers, etc. At its August 2001 convention, Kappa Alpha passed a resolution prohibiting the use of the battle flag at KA chapter houses, on articles of clothing bearing the KA symbolism or at KA functions or gatherings. (pg. 57)"


Ok, now my fingers hurt! I hope you find this interesting or informative. The magazine is on sale now, but if any of you KA's would like my copy when I am done with it, just email me and I would be glad to send it to you.

-Cash78mere