Both Blacks and Whites served under the banner which some would now banish.

3,000 armed Blacks were with Stonewall Jackson in Frederick, Maryland, in September 1862. They served in an integrated southern army struggling for an independent nation.

The historic records of pro-southern Black military involvement under the Confederate battle flag was engraved in fact with their sacred blood. Their sacrifices along side of their white southern brothers have earned them honor of southern memories.

To the estimated 93,000 blacks who served the Southern cause during the war, the battle flag represented their hope for freedom in a free and independent nation.

Confederate blacks first engaged Union blacks at the battle of the Crater in Petersburg. The fighting was very tough, and at close quarters. Each side was motivated by love of country, devotion to duty, and the causes they represented.

Each followed his own flag.

Ed Smith, professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C., has publicly argued that the Confederacy would not have lasted four months, much less four years, without the support of Southern blacks. During years of extensive research, Smith has located numerous instances where blacks served the young Confederacy not as chattel, but as patriots.

Absurd, you say? Smith likens blacks serving the Confederacy to blacks serving in the jungles of Vietnam -- serving in a country which had not yet provided full civil rights. You may recall that the Voting Rights Act was not passed until 1965, long after many blacks had died in those faraway jungles and all of American's other wars. The deeds of these men stand today as a shining testimony to patriotism. Smith, incidentally, is a black American.

BLACK PARTICIPATION IN THE WAR. The truth is that Black Yankee regiments were segregated units and generally ostracized by the regular and volunteer forces. However, Blacks in the Confederate Army were integrated in existing regiments, treated with dignity and respect, served along side and received the same accommodations as their white counterparts.