Amid the images and videos that emerged from Wednesday’s rampage, the sight of a man casually carrying the Confederate battle flag outside the Senate floor was a piercing reminder of the persistence of white supremacism more than 150 years after the end of the Civil War.
Months after statues of Confederate leaders and racist figures were removed or torn down around the world, an unidentified man in bluejeans and a black sweatshirt carried the emblem of racism through the Ohio Clock corridor, past a portrait of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, an abolitionist.
The emblem has appeared in the Capitol before.
The Mississippi flag, which once featured the Confederate symbol prominently, hung in the Capitol until June 2020, when it was replaced after a vote by the State Legislature to remove the emblem.
But Wednesday was the first time that someone had managed to bring the flag into the building as an act of insurrection, according to historians.
Sunday, January 10, 2021
Flag of Treason in the US Capitol
Maria Cramer at NYT:
