Recovered history: Trying to redefine bad symbols

Just caught up with this interesting piece in Hit & Run by Jesse Walker about some of the ways that offensive symbols like the Confederate flag have been redefines. As Walker points out  at the end of his article:

Some schmo is bound to read the above as a "defense" of Confederate iconography, so let me be clear: When the battle flag made a comeback in the middle of the 20th century, the number one reason for its return was its popularity among the partisans of Jim Crow. The number two reason was the centennial of the Civil War. If you scraped together a list of additional reasons, I doubt that anti-racist radicals détourning the symbols of white supremacy would crack the top ten. This is a historical byway.

But still interesting....