FOR Taoiseach John Bruton on his visit to Charleston, South Carolina, a photograph with Mayor Joseph Riley in front of the Civil War monument to the Confederate dead was common courtesy. But these monuments in cities and towns across the old Confederacy are now part of a new conflict over symbols seen as offensive to African Americans - or some of them.
In Walterboro, South Carolina, black leaders have petitioned the county council to tear down the Confederate monument there. In Franklin, Tennessee, a black resident has filed a lawsuit in a federal court seeking the removal of that town's Confederate soldier statue as well as $44 million in damages.
In Virginia, black pressure has resulted in the official state song, Carry Me Back to Old Virginny being retired because of references to "old massa" and "darkies". In Florida a black legislator wants that state's song, Old. Folks at Home, eliminated because of its nostalgia for the plantations.
The singing of Dixie at official functions has caused black walk outs. In Memphis, Tennessee, there have been attempts to have the graves of Confederate General Nathan Forrest and his wife moved off state property.
The displaying of the Confederate battle flag, a blue St Andrew's cross on a red background with seven stars on each arm for the seven secessionist states, is causing the greatest controversy, however. It has been flying over the State Capitol in Columbia, South Carolina, since 1962, and repeated campaigns by black organisations like the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) have failed to move it.
An unsuccessful campaign has also been waged to remove the Confederate flag from the Georgia state flag in which it was incorporated as a segregationist symbol during the civil rights campaign in 1957. Recently the governor of New York, George Pataki, ordered the Georgia flag removed from the display of the flags of the 50 states in Albany because it is seen as a "symbol of hatred". In retaliation, two Georgia senators took down the New York state flag from the Atlanta hall of flags.
Some years ago, Alabama removed the offending symbol from its state flag. So Georgia and Mississipi are the only states to have the Confederate flag as part of their flags.
The flag controversy flared up recently in Maryland when the local branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), got permission to have the flag incorporated into their car licence plates. But after protests from the NAACP, the plates were withdrawn by the local authorities, a decision that has been challenged successfully in the Maryland courts but will be appealed further.
It is in South Carolina, the first state to have seceded from the Union in 1860, that the symbols battle is being fought most vigorously. The Confederate battle flag was hoisted over the dome of the state Capitol in Columbia in 1962 when the centennial of the Civil War was being commemorated and it has stayed ever since.
Governor David Beasley who was originally a supporter of the flag, has since had a conversion after a morning of prayer and Bible study convinced him that it is a symbol of strife. There are also economic considerations.
German companies in South Carolina like BMW and Hoechst are nervous because neofascist groups in Germany as well as the Ku Klux Klan also flaunt the flag as their symbol.
In South Africa, Afrikaner extremists fly the rebel flag. It has also been seen in Croke Park when certain counties figure in the finals but presumably without any political connotations.
Governor Beasley has proposed moving the flag from the dome to a nearby Confederate monument but opponents like Republican Senator Glen McConnell accuse him of reneging on a commitment to declare that the flag of the Lost Cause is not racist per se and can be displayed respectfully at parades and public events. The issue may now go to a referendum later this year.
Senator McConnell owns a Civil War memorabilia shop in Charleston which is so successful that he will soon move to bigger quarters. He gave an interview to The Irish Times in a crowded storeroom at the back of his shop.
"In South Carolina, the love of that flag is never going to go away. The heritage of that flag is going to be passed on from generation to generation. The African American leadership has got to wake up to that reality," he says. "No way are they going to perform cultural genocide on that flag and the Confederate heritage."
But for Nelson Rivers, head of the NAACP in the south east of the US, the flag "represents man's worst treatment of another human being - man's inhumanity to man. It represents slavery, racism, hatred and treason." These flags "memorialise a period that America should never want to glorify", he said in an interview.
Many whites claim that the NAACP position is not representative of most black people and goes too far. This correspondent, while front of the Capitol dome, in Columbia, which is now being repaired, stopped a number of black people and asked them for their views of the flag flying over their heads.
Three of them were black men working on the repair of the dome itself. Huey Lee said the flag "doesn't bother me at all. I don't see it as offensive."
James Washington, born in Columbia, said the same. Perry Carr who comes from the North felt similarly. "We don't have any memories of that time. There were white slaves as well as black slaves. The United States flag can also be offensive to people."
But a black student of politics at the University of South Carolina, Steven James, said he did find the flag "offensive". "I totally disagree with it. It stands for slavery and segregation and represents the era of Jim Crow. There is still a lot of racism but now it is more subtle."
A smartly dressed black woman who preferred not go give her name said she found the flag "extremely offensive". "People who see nothing wrong with it should not be in office."
In an office not far from the Capitol, "Chris Sullivan is a leader of the SCV in South Carolina and Oran Smith edits the magazine, Southern Partisan. They defended their support of the flag and other Confederate symbols. Says Sullivan: "If people understood the history of the South, there is less to be offended by. The flag is a memorial to those who died in defence of their state."
Oran Smith, who has also been a political consultant to Republican presidential contender Pat Buchanan, says that there is a political as well as historical and cultural aspect. "There is a certain group of the politically correct who want to mould public opinion so that everybody parrots this theme Confederate bad, Conservative bad, and often Republican bad. We are under attack, politically as well as historically."
Another SCV official, David Thresher, of Atlanta, accuses the NAACP and other black leaders of ulterior motives in attacks on Confederate symbols. They attack these symbols when they "want to get their way" on other matters such as improved welfare legislation. They use the symbols as "a tool to get their way".
A well known historian of the South's politics, Professor Dan Carter of Emory University, Atlanta, is sympathetic to the black stand against the Confederate flag as used in Georgia and South Carolina but even he feels there is ambiguity in the current struggle over whether the symbols are really racist. Race is often involved but "it is not true to say that everyone is anxious to defend the symbols in a racist way".
Carter, who would qualify for membership of the SCV as he had ancestors killed at Gettysburg, wonders how important all this is. "Symbols never fed children... you can be obsessed in the struggle over symbolic issues as a way of avoiding hard issues." He says that flag boosters may be more guilty of "boorish, unsouthern behaviour" than of racism. "Wilful cruelty and disregard of others feelings is a violation of southern notions of civility and, manners."
Carter, who spent a year recently at Cambridge University, is struck by parallels between the role played by symbols in Northern Ireland's troubles and in the Deep South of his own country. He found the "divisiveness" of the Catholic and Protestant symbols in Northern Ireland "fascinating". The "marches there are exactly the kind of divisive symbolism I was talking about" at work in the South.
Chris Sullivan, who has Irish ancestors, prefers to see a parallel between the cultural "oppression" of the federal government towards the southern states and the situation of pre independent Ireland under British rule.
The flag issue has caused division among religious ministers as well. When Governor Beasley changed tack on the flying of the flag over the Capitol, he was accused of heresy by 16 conservative Christian pastors all white, who nailed to his door a tract called "Moral defence of the Confederation flag".
The pastors pointed out that the flag itself is a Christian symbol" as it has the St Andrew's Cross. The pastors deplored the fact that it is used by some racist groups such as the Klan. "Though small in number, these groups are an enemy of the cause of Christ in their misappropriation not only of the Confederate battle flag, but more importantly the Christian cross," the pastors said.
This tract stirred up a counter demonstration by another group of religious leaders representing Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews. They marched on the Capitol earlier this year to protest against the flying of the flag. "The swastika was a style of cross too," says Rev Joseph Darby, an African Methodist pastor. "But I don't know many people who would call it a Christian symbol."
Senator McConnell says that in his campaign in favour of the flag, he has been the target of extremist right wing groups who say he is not going far enough. He has been called a "lily livered, gutless wimp" and has been accused of "trying to turn the US into Africana", he says shaking his head.
He attributes the huge interest in Civil War history and memorabilia to a recent film on Gettysburg and an American Public Television series on the war. His shop also has a section on African American involvement in the war including the part played by the 55th black Massachusetts Regiment on the Union side.
Every year McConnell, like thousands of other American Civil War buffs, takes part in re enactments of famous battles wearing authentic uniforms. In McConnell's case he refights some battles which involved his Scotch Irish forbears against descendants of the 55th Mass and they later "sit around campfires and respectfully share in the memory of ancestors who marched to different drums".
When Senator Connell passes the monument to the Confederate dead on his way to the Capitol to do his legislative work, he can read the words: "Let the South Carolinian of another generation remember that the State taught them how to live and how to die; and that from her broken fortunes she has preserved for her children the priceless treasures of their memories, teaching who may claim the same birthright that truth, courage and patriotism endure forever.
As far as he is concerned, "the real issue is not where the flag flies. The real issue is what it stands for."
And of course that is still the problem.