Pbs8 things you didn’t know about the confederate flagjun 21, 2015

Watch South Carolina Gov. EDT Monday. She is expected to address the Confederate flag controversy. Following the massacre in Charleston , South Carolina on Wednesday in which a gunman shot and killed nine people attending bible study at a historic black church, the Confederate battle flag — also called the rebel flag, the southern cross and the Dixie flag — has been the subject of contentious debate.

To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred.

Instead, the flag that most people associate with the Confederacy was the battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Remove it now to honor Charleston victims. Here are eight things you may not have known about this contentious Confederate emblem. The Confederate battle flag was never the official flag of the Confederacy. Instead, the flag that most people associate with the Confederacy was the battle flag of Gen. Robert E. It only came to be the flag most prominently associated with the Confederacy after the South lost the war.

Roughly one in ten Americans feels positively when they see the Confederate flag displayed, according to a Pew Research Center poll. The same study showed that 30 percent of Americans reported a negative reaction to seeing the flag on display. But the majority, 58 percent, reported feeling neither positive nor negative. The poll also showed that African-Americans, Democrats and the highly educated were more likely to perceive the flag negatively.

Mississippi fans in stands with Confederate flags during a sporting event in