Battle over the past rages on in an evolving South

Parents in Cherokee County, Ga., successfully urged their school board to refuse to name a new high school for Joseph E. Brown, the Confederate governor who, at the risk of his popularity, welcomed federal reform after the Civil War.

In Georgia, there's a tough fight brewing over bringing a bust of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from Jeff Davis County - where there are four Jeff Davis schools - to the Georgia Capitol.

And, in Charlotte, N.C., a decision was recently made to take down the battle flag - from a Confederate cemetery.

At old-line Southern colleges like the University of the South, regents are downplaying old Confederate-era rituals and even the word "South" so as not to scare away prospective students from up North.

"When people have a sense that things are unraveling, whether it's on the right or left, these questions come up again," says Ira Berlin, a Civil War historian at the University of Maryland.

But Southern heritage proponents are winning some skirmishes, too.

In Florida, the town of Brooksville decided not to change the image of Confederate soldiers on the water-tower logo after someone pointed out that an annual reenactment of the "Brooksville Raid" was a major tourist draw. In South Carolina, a bill is moving forward to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans their own license plate. Seventy-two percent of Georgians want to see a referendum on bringing back the pre-2001 Cross of St. Andrew's flag across the Peach State. Stone Mountain with its 90-foot carved images of Lee, Davis, and Stonewall Jackson is still Georgia's biggest tourist draw. "Part of Southern culture is the recognition that there are things worth fighting for," says Jim Thompson, editorial page director of the Athens, Ga., Banner-Herald.

Southerners say the region's critics often take not only historical but biblical references and meanings out of context - the result, they say, of biased schooling.

It remains a highly charged debate, since perceptions of past are also a lens on the present. Most Southerners today agree that blacks are also original settlers and inheritors of the South, and deserve their equal place in civic affairs. But critics worry that some of the worst elements of the "old" South may be rising again - their suspicions fueled by a nationwide weakening of affirmative action and an ongoing resegregation of public schools, especially in the South.

The last time "Dixie" was whistled officially in the capital was probably during Ronald Reagan's first inauguration. But last year, Bush supporter Robert T. Hines shot a cannon at Arlington National Cemetery on Davis's birthday.

"The culture of the South is an expanding thing rather than a xenophobic and dwindling thing," says John Hurley, president of the Confederate Memorial Association in Washington.

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