10/29/2026
In 1964, a Confederate battle flag flew in front of San Francisco City Hall.
It was raised on Flag Day as one of eighteen historic American banners in the new Pavilion of American Flags in Civic Center Plaza. Stanley Bergman and local civic groups selected the flags to illustrate the nation’s story.
The Confederate Battle Standard flew among Revolutionary, Texas, California, and Union flags. A plaque explained its place in American history.
Mayor John Shelley and a military band attended the dedication. The flag flew daily and remained part of the display for years.
It belonged there then. It belongs in any honest display of American flags now.
This is pure Americana. Multi-generational Americans designed it in America for Americans defending their American homes. The men who carried it were the direct descendants, relatives, and neighbors of the Founders.
For example, George Washington’s closest family lines including the last private owner of Mount Vernon—joined the Confederacy. John Augustine Washington III served as aide-de-camp to Robert E. Lee and died in 1861. Multiple Washington kinsmen are buried among Confederate dead.
Thomas Jefferson’s grandsons all sided with the South: His grandson who was raised at Monticello, George W Randolph was a Confederate General who served as Confederate Secretary of War; He’s buried right beside Thomas Jefferson.
These southern men and many others were the blood and heirs of the Founding Fathers and American Revolution patriots. They were answering the call as their forefathers had when British armies invaded.

Not long ago, ordinary American flag books, guides, and pamphlets showcased the Confederate battle flag as a famous American banner. It appeared alongside the Stars and Stripes, the Gadsden, and the Betsy Ross. People flew it across the country for the same reason it has appeared overseas: it marks people standing up under long odds against domineering power. It showed up when the Berlin Wall fell, among Irish “rebels,” in Scotland, with Taiwanese resistance to mainland control, and among African fighters against colonial or dictatorial rule.
To those who fly it, it signals defiance, courage, and the refusal to be subjugated by a stronger central authority. That recognition is older and wider than any modern American campaign to erase it. 
The men who raised the Confederate flag did their duty. They answered the call the way their grandfathers had in 1776: when a distant government ordered invasion of their homeland, they stood and fought. They will be remembered for that.
Today’s Orwellian, Mao-Marxist, Taliban-style woke cancel culture wants the opposite. These narrow-minded global sheep twist every symbol of independent resistance into “hate” the moment it challenges their preferred totalitarian agenda. They want to erase history that shows Americans once defended homes and states against overwhelming force.
In 1964 even San Francisco’s civic leaders and the ACLU treated the flag as legitimate American history. The same left that once shared more common ground with Confederates on the simple right of a people to resist domination now demands its destruction—because they cannot tolerate anyone who stands against dictatorial control.
The Confederate flag that flew in San Francisco is part of the American story. It deserved to be there then. It deserves recognition now. People should embrace it as the pure American banner of courage against tyranny that it has always been. -RJ
