The Winchester Lecture

On April 8, 2009, it was announced by my professor in my History 1020 class that the History Department was hosting an event. It was the 2009 Winchester Lecture and it was presenting speaker Dr. John M. Coski. The topic of his lecture was “The Confederate Battle Flag: The Evolution of a Controversial American Symbol”. It was held at the Derryberry Hall Auditorium on Thursday, April 16, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. We were told if we attended and wrote a page of notes we would be awarded extra credit. Many people attended the event. The auditorium was almost packed with the History Department professors, teachers from other schools, war veterans, some children with their families, and mostly filled with students that attend Tennessee Tech University. Most of the students were in the same boat that I was in with the whole extra credit situation.
The speaker, Dr. John M. Coski, is the historian and library director at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. He is also the author of The Confederate Battle Flag: American’s Most Embattled Emblem. He said he wrote the book because he started seeing different variations of the Confederate Battle Flag everywhere he went, so he started to do some research and became more involved and interested in it. The confederate flag has been recreated so many times throughout history. Although the flags do look very similar, at the same time they also look extremely different from each one another. Both the book and the lecture discuss the flag’s history and the many different meanings that are attached to it. Many view the flag and its meaning in different ways. To some they view the flag as a symbol of white supremacy and racial injustice. To others, they think it represents a tradition Southern heritage.