Is That a Confederate Flag in a New York City Subway Station?

The rightful push to take down Confederate flags in the aftermath of the Charleston tragedy has reached an unexpected place: the New York City subway. The New York Post noticed tile mosaics in the Times Square Station that bear a striking and disturbing resemblance to the flag, and reports that they’re more than a design coincidence:

Jackowe links the tiles to Ochs and the Confederacy in a 2012 article for Civil War Times magazine (spotted by Animal NY). That piece traces Ochs to a “house divided”: a mother loyal to the South—“Robert E. Lee was her idol,” wrote Ochs, according to Jackowe—but a father who fought for the North. After buying the Times in 1896, Ochs apparently maintained some Southern sympathies; raised in Knoxville, he “donated to establish Confederate cemeteries in Tennessee,” writes Jackowe.