The Lynchburg Museum’s exhibit gives the flag broad context. Among many topics, it covers the history of Confederate national and battle flags and the 1865 Battle of Five Forks.

The Lynchburg Museum’s exhibit gives the flag broad context. Among many topics, it covers the history of Confederate national and battle flags and the 1865 Battle of Five Forks.

The Lynchburg Museum invites the public to visit its new exhibit, Five Forks Battle Flag: A Community Perspective, which formally opens on Sunday, January 5, 2020.

The exhibit features an original Confederate battle flag captured during the Battle of Five Forks in the final days of the American Civil War. The so-called “Five Forks battle flag” is on loan from the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. The flag was recently repaired by professional textile conservators, and this is the first time it will be on display in public since being conserved.

Artifacts displayed in the exhibit include the original Medal of Honor awarded to Lt. William Winegar, the Union soldier who captured the battle flag at the Battle of Five Forks in 1865. It has been loaned by one of Winegar’s direct descendants.

Artifacts displayed in the exhibit include the original Medal of Honor awarded to Lt. William Winegar, the Union soldier who captured the battle flag at the Battle of Five Forks in 1865. It has been loaned by one of Winegar’s direct descendants.

The Five Forks battle flag became the focus of intense community interest and debate in late 2018 and early 2019. An unprecedented amount of commentary from the public, as well as local and regional media attention, was directed towards the Lynchburg Museum as the site for exhibiting the flag, conserved through a crowd-funded campaign led by the Eleventh Virginia Company G ‘Lynchburg Home Guard’, Inc., reenacting unit.

To address community concerns, the Lynchburg Museum began a process to evaluate how best to display this contested and complicated historic object with broad social implications. The Museum’s approach was to cast a wide net in identifying the ideas, people, places, scholarship, and resources that would best help inform and shape the display. This and every Lynchburg Museum exhibit rests on a set of core values: authenticity; historical accuracy; equity and inclusion; respect; and relevance.

The exhibit explains how the Confederate battle flag was adopted by the “Lost Cause” after the Civil War and was associated with domestic terrorism, Jim Crow segregation, and opposition to federal government in the 20th century.

The exhibit explains how the Confederate battle flag was adopted by the “Lost Cause” after the Civil War and was associated with domestic terrorism, Jim Crow segregation, and opposition to federal government in the 20th century.

The Museum took a unique “community perspective” approach to this exhibit after evaluating the depth and breadth of responses towards exhibiting this battle flag. Museum staff received more than 3,000 statements from the public in the form of letters, phone calls, emails, social media posts, comments on social media posts, community survey responses, and personal conversations. Presenting historical information together with a diverse set of perspectives is central to the Museum’s approach to this exhibit.

The Lynchburg Museum’s exhibit does what museums do: gives the flag broad context. It covers the history of Confederate national and battle flags, the Battle of Five Forks, the Union soldier who captured the flag, the flag conservation process, the “Lost Cause,” and uses of Confederate battle flags in the 20th century. Artifacts on display include the Five Forks battle flag and its original flagstaff, the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to the Union soldier who captured the flag in 1865, battle flag cufflinks connected to Gen. Jubal A. Early, and a Virginia history textbook from 1957.

At the center of the exhibit is a round table where visitors can fill out comment cards and read contemporary scholarship about Confederate flags, the Lost Cause, and Civil War memory.

At the center of the exhibit is a round table where visitors can fill out comment cards and read contemporary scholarship about Confederate flags, the Lost Cause, and Civil War memory.

An important component of the exhibit is the extensive public feedback and commentary on the Five Forks battle flag, which the Museum received through individual messages, a community-wide survey, and a series of targeted focus groups. A curated selection of this feedback, representing very diverse viewpoints, is featured prominently in the exhibit. Visitors are encouraged to continue the conversation by answering a series of “questions for reflection” posted near the conclusion. A sample of these reflections will be shared on a “Community Perspectives” board in the exhibit.

Five Forks Battle Flag: A Community Perspective will remain open until January 31, 2020. The Lynchburg Museum is open daily, 10-4 (Sunday, 12-4). Admission is always free.

Please share your thoughts about our exhibit. Email museum@lynchburgva.gov (or use the button below) and your message will be included with the feedback collected in the exhibit.