Its even more mind boggling that the actual confederate government had not formerly adopted the confederate battle flag. Yet years later when the southern Dixiecrats (1948) and the growing KKK needed a symbol to rally around. Voilà you have "heritage."
A completely unrelated, but fond memory I have, is of my high school history teacher who brought in a confederate battle flag and stomped on it in front of our class. Proclaiming that this was the flag of a hateful cause and shouldn't hang in anyone's yard. I can still remember him yelling "THEY LOST!" He really challenged students in his class to not accept this flag as a piece of heritage, but as a symbol of white supremacy.