Georgia Gov. Zell Miller is backing off from his effort to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag now that he's running for re-election.
Miller tried to push the change through the Legislature, declaring the emblem a vestige of a segregationist era and saying he wanted it gone before the Olympics come to Atlanta in 1996. But he didn't have enough votes to pass the bill and said Friday night he won't pursue it again.Miller's flag legislation would have replaced the crossed-bars battle emblem with the red and white horizontal bars of the old Confederate national flag. That was the design used from 1879 to 1956, when the Legislature adopted the current design.
He said the 1956 change was a backlash against federal mandates on school integration.