The snake, it turns out, was something of a Colonial-era meme, evidently originated by Benjamin Franklin. His was by far the coolest, with its menacing rattler and provocative slogan. Neither endured like the design of Christopher Gadsden, a Charleston-born brigadier general in the Continental Army. The Gadsden flag is one of at least three kinds of flags created by independence-minded colonists in the run-up to the Revolutionary War, according to the writer and historian Marc Leepson, the author of “Flag: An American Biography.” Liberty flags featured that word on a variety of backdrops the Pine Tree flag floated the slogan “An Appeal To Heaven” over a depiction of a pine tree. And this reflects a deeper question, one that’s actually pretty compelling: How do we decide what the Gadsden flag, or indeed any symbol, really means? It’s also been appropriated to promote U.S. In recent years, the Gadsden flag has become a favorite among Tea Party enthusiasts, Second Amendment zealots-really anyone who gets riled up by the idea of government overreach. But however cooked up the notion that there was some kind of federal crackdown on the design, the controversy does point to something real. (which whipped up a dedicated page to correct misreporting around “the Gadsden Flag case”) had merely told the Postal Service, in long-winded legal terms, to look into the complaint. There was no such definitive “ruling,” from the Obama Administration or anyone else. Observers of a particular ideological bent reacted with alarm or outrage: “ Is the Gadsden Flag Racist?,” “ Government Ruling: Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Gadsden Flag Can Be Racist & ‘Racial Harassment,’ ” “ Obama Administration: ‘Don't Tread on Me’ Clothes Are Racist,” and so on. School of Law, brought this to the public’s attention through the Volokh Conspiracy, his legal-affairs blog on the Washington Post’ s Web site. Eugene Volokh, a professor at the U.C.L.A. But, this summer, that decision was reversed by the E.E.O.C., which, after some procedural back-and-forth, ordered the agency to investigate the matter. The Postal Service dismissed the complaint. Specifically, as a recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filing on the matter put it, one of the man’s co-workers “repeatedly wore a cap to work with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag.” The cap design in question involves a coiled rattlesnake over the phrase “ DON’T TREAD ON ME,” against a yellow background. In January of 2014, an African-American maintenance mechanic for the United States Postal Service in Denver filed a complaint charging that he had been subjected to racial discrimination. How do we decide what the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, or indeed any symbol, really means? Photograph by Drew Angerer / The New York Times / Redux
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