Apple pulls some Civil War games with Confederate flags

Civil War historians were flummoxed by Apple’s removal of Civil War games from its App Store that included images of the Confederate flag.

“It seems to me that pulling Civil War games might be an extreme response to the flag controversy, as if the Civil War didn’t exist,” said Bob Brinkmeyer, a professor of Southern studies at the University of South Carolina.

Apple’s decision this week came soon after major retailers and e-commerce sites, from Walmart to Amazon to eBay, banned sales of Confederate flags and products with Confederate images on them.

The commercial actions came in response to the shooting of nine African Americans at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. The young man arrested for the crime had an apparent fondness for the Confederate flag and the flags of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, judging by photographs of him flaunting those symbols.

The historians had no beef with the product recalls, but took issue with removing the flag in historic representations, even games played on smartphones.

Joan Waugh, a history professor at UCLA, noted that the Confederate flag is an essential symbol in Civil War history.

According to one game developer, Apple sent him a note citing guidelines prohibiting “mean-spirited” references while informing him that it would remove his games.

“We have removed apps from the App Store that use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways, which is in violation of our guidelines,” a representative said.