MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When Sidney Street heard about the shooting of civil rights activist James Meredith by a sniper, he took a flag to the street and burned it, telling a group that had gathered to watch, “We don’t need no damn flag.” He told an officer when asked, “If they let that happen to Meredith, we don’t need an American flag.” Street was arrested and convicted of “Malicious Mischief in that [he] did willfully and unlawfully defile, cast contempt upon and burn an American Flag.” Street’s case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, which overturned his conviction in 1969 on the grounds that it could not be determined whether it was Street’s burning of the flag or his words accompanying that action that resulted in his conviction.

Street’s case is just one of nearly 75 cases to appear before American courts in the years between 1967 and 1975 in which conduct or speech involving the U.S. flag was at issue. From wearing it as clothing to burning or otherwise defacing it to displaying it as resistance art, the flag in the Vietnam years became a hot-button political artifact in uses beyond its patriotic display. This paper will evaluate these Vietnam-era cases to determine what themes emerge as part of the flag’s meaning and use in wartime culture as well as the outcomes for the defendants. As of 1989-90, flag desecration statutes are no longer enforceable, but what did they look like during the Vietnam era? What language did statutes use, and what did the courts say about that language? Finally, what do these cases suggest about activism using what many believe is the sacred symbol of the flag? Can researchers draw conclusions about the role of the flag during the Vietnam war?