The Confederate flag has everything to do with objecting to the granting of equal rights to black Americans, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns said Thursday.
Burns, whose nine-part documentary on the Civil War released in 1990 was a huge success, spoke about the growing controversy surrounding the flag on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday morning.
"I think what happens is that we build up over time the sense of an excuse about why it came, and it's political, or it's social, or it's economic," Burns said. "If you read South Carolina's articles of secession in November after [Abraham] Lincoln's election of 1860, they don't mention states' rights, they don't mention nullification. They mention slavery over and over again.
"These are the symbolic, residual issues we're dealing with. Those [Confederate] flags came in after Brown v. Board of Education. This is not about heritage. This is about resistance to civil rights."
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The Confederate flag has been the source of controversy in the last week after a man shot and killed nine people in a Charleston, S.C. church. All of the victims were black, and
photos of the alleged shooter have since appeared on the Internet that show him holding a Confederate flag and a weapon.
A Confederate flag flies on the grounds of South Carolina's statehouse in Columbia, and there have been several calls to have it removed. Gov.
Nikki Haley said this week she would like to see it removed, but so far it is still flying.
Alabama Gov.
Robert Bentley ordered Confederate flags to be removed from the grounds of his statehouse on Wednesday, saying, "This is the right thing to do."
Others, however, think removing Confederate flags is not the answer.
"The next flag that will come under assault, and it will not be long, is the American flag," conservative radio host
Rush Limbaugh said.
"If you take a look at the timeline of progressive events, their speed and rapidity with which the left is conducting this assault on all of these American traditions and institutions, if you don't think the American flag's in their crosshairs down the road, you had better stop and reconsider."
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