Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

As I mentioned in a comment on Kevin’s blog, I recently made a long road trip of almost 1,200 miles across Texas and back, mostly through rural counties and small towns, and saw only a handful of Confederate flags — literally, few enough to count on both hands. That’s a little surprising, given the assurances being made in some quarters about a widespread, popular, groundswell of support for the Confederate flag. Maybe it’s happening in other places, but not so much in Texas.

One place I expected to see a Confederate flag, but didn’t, came early in the trip, at Johnny Reb’s Dixie Cafe in Hearne. Sure enough, they changed their signage last month (above), dropping both the flag and the Johnny Reb reference in favor of a more generic Lone Star.

One of the restaurant’s partners, Sharon Zeig, said the change was simply a business decision that had “nothing to do” with the most recent controversy over the symbol, and had been planned for months. That’s undoubtedly true, but it’s also true that Confederate iconography doesn’t square anymore with promoting one’s business to the widest possible range of potential customers. You can ask Lloyd Bessinger about that. Now Dixie can focus on what they seem to do extremely well — namely, chicken fried steak and sweet tea.

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Image via KAGSTV.com