The untold story behind the other Confederate flag

CNN — For the past 150-some years, while the Confederate battle flag has monopolized attention with its corrosive symbolism and inflammatory bluster, a different, largely unknown Confederate flag – the Confederate Flag of Truce, which the South used in the process of surrendering to the North – has been quietly waiting for its moment in the spotlight. Carlos Avendaño “The show is asking the question, ‘What if this cloth, the Flag of Truce, was the symbol of the Civil War rather than one of the many Confederate battle flags?’” said Clark, who is also a professor of art and art history at Amherst College in Massachusetts. "Woven replica of the Confederate Flag of Truce," 2019 by Sonya Clark, in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia. At the opening of the new exhibition in Philadelphia, she dressed as the cleaning woman pictured in Gordon Parks’ famous 1942 photograph “American Gothic” and, on her hands and knees, mopped up dust on the floor with a rag printed with the Confederate battle flag. We don’t get it done by saying, ‘Oh let’s be colorblind, and pretend there’s no color.’ We have to look problems in the face, roll up our sleeves and talk about difficult things.” “Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, the Flag We Should Know,” is on display at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia until Aug. 4, 2019.