Va. city bans public Confederate flag displays
Supporters of a Sons of Confederate Veterans rally wave flags in protest at Hopkins Green in Lexington, Va., Sept. 1, 2011. / AP
LEXINGTON, Va. - Officials in the rural Virginia city where Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson are buried voted late Thursday to prohibit the flying of the Confederate flag on city-owned poles.
After a lively 2 1/2-hour public hearing, the Lexington City Council voted 4-1 to allow only U.S., Virginia and city flags to be flown. Personal displays of the Confederate flag are not affected. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, whose members showed up in force after leading a rally that turned a downtown park into a sea of Confederate flags, vowed to challenge the ordinance in court.
Some speakers during the meeting said the ordinance was an affront to the men who fought in the Civil War in defense of the South. One speaker stayed silent during his allotted three minutes, in memory of the Civil War dead.
But many speakers complained that the flag was an offensive, divisive symbol of the South's history of slavery and shouldn't be endorsed by the city of 7,000 people.
"The Confederate flag is not something we want to see flying from our public property," said city resident Marquita Dunn, who is black. "The flag is offensive to us."
Most residents who spoke, both blacks and whites, opposed the ordinance. But H.K. Edgerton, the former president of the NAACP chapter in Asheville, N.C., said he supported flying the Confederate flag because he wanted to honor black Confederate soldiers. Edgerton, who is black, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with images of those black soldiers.
"What you're going to do in banning the Southern cross is wrong. May God bless Dixie," he said, amid some gasps from the audience.
Before the rally, ordinance opponents rallied in the city park, then marched to the hearing under a parade of Confederate flags.
"I am a firm believer in the freedom to express our individual rights, which include flying the flag that we decide to fly," said Philip Way, a Civil War re-enactor dressed in a Confederate wool uniform despite the summer temperatures. "That's freedom to me."
Mimi Knight, watching from a wrought iron fence as the flags passed, said she thought the city ordinance seemed too restrictive, noting that it also extended to flags from Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University. Both colleges are in the city.
"These are the things that make Lexington what it is," said Knight, who didn't participate in the rally. "The Confederate flag is part of our heritage."
The Sons of Confederate Veterans organized the "Save our Flags" gathering, which offered free hot dogs and blue grass music. Speakers addressed the crowd amid supportive shouts of "Amen." A promotional flyer depicted Lee with a tear rolling down his cheek.
City Manager T. Jon Ellestad noted that the ordinance only affected city property and wasn't specifically aimed at the Confederate flag. "They can carry their flags anywhere they want," he said.
The city received hundreds of complaints in January, the last time Confederate flags were planted in holders on light poles, to mark Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday. People complained "that displaying the Confederate flag is very hurtful to groups of people," Ellestad said. "In their mind, it stands for the defense of slavery."
Such complaints convinced city leaders that they should have clear guidelines governing the flying of flags and banners on light poles, Ellestad said.
But heritage groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans argued that restrictions on the flying of the Confederate flag in Lexington are especially painful because of the two military leaders' strong ties here.
The NAACP launched an economic boycott of South Carolina in 1999 about the Confederate flag that flew atop the Statehouse dome and in the chambers of the House and Senate. A compromise in 2000 moved the flag to a monument outside the Statehouse. The group's president says the flag is a symbol of slavery and segregation.
Some speakers at Thursday's hearing said they, too, would boycott the city, which banks heavily on its Confederate history to attract tourists.
Jackson taught at VMI before the Civil War, where he became widely known as "Stonewall" after the first Battle of Manassas. He died in 1863 from wounds suffered at Chancellorsville along with pneumonia, and is buried in Lexington, according to the website for the Stonewall Jackson House.
Lee, who led Confederate forces during the Civil War before surrendering at Appomattox in 1865, became president of what is now Washington and Lee, where he is buried.
"By all means they should be honored in their hometown," said Brandon Dorsey, commander of Camp 1296 of the Stonewall Brigade of the Confederate Veterans. "I look at the flag as honoring the veterans."
This is not the first time that Lexington, at the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley, has clashed with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The city tried nearly 20 years ago to ban the display of the Confederate flag during a parade honoring Jackson. The American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully defended the group's bid to carry the flag, is closely watching this dispute from afar.
"City council could live to regret this ordinance, as it imposes unusually restrictive limits on the use of the light poles," said Kent Willis, the ACLU's executive director in Virginia. "Sometime in the future when city officials want to use those light poles to promote a special event they may find themselves handcuffed by their own lawmaking."
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African Americans see that every time they look at the U.S. flag, Read up on slavery in the United States some time....
Sheila sez, "It's as undesirable as another ethnic community wishing to relive the Holocaust..."
Your tired and mistaken (or is it mendacious?) attempted comparison of the Confederacy and the Third Reich deserves contemptuous dismissal. There were no similarities.
There were 9 million Jews in Europe before WWII -- 3 million afterward. By contrast, the black/slave population of the United States grew at basically the same rate as the free/white population. Even during the violence and privation of war, the black population of the Confederacy grew about 7 percent. No similarity there.
In some Nazi death camps, inmates were literally worked to death. In North America, slaves were worked to death in the Caribbean, but not in the South, and certainly not during the four years of the Confederacy's existence. In fact, there were laws requiring that slaves be provided for in sickness and old age, when they could no longer work -- early, private sector versions of Medicare and Medicaid?... No similarity there.
In some Nazi concentration camps, inmates were fed a diet scientifically calculated to starve them to death in three months. By contrast, in the South, both before, during the Confederacy, slaves ate basically the same thing most white people ate. Today, it's called "soul food" and it's considered tasty and nutritious, if a bit high in starch. No similarity there.
Confinement, torture, starvation and death were official government policy in the Third Reich. By contrast, the abuse of slaves was forbidden by law in the South, before and during the Confederacy. Yes, abuse sometimes occurred but as a violation of the law, not implementation of it.
Someone could tell these truths to Jackson-Lee but she wouldn't be interested in truth. She has an agenda to push and truth isn't necessary to do that.
If you're going to restrict a historic, non-sovereign flag for how it has been misused by people who represesnt a miniscule portion of the population, how about a flag of sovereignty whose OFFICIAL acts include:
(1) brutally warring on Southern civilians ostensibly to "end slavery" while a slave was creating the statue of "Freedom" to go atop the US capitol dome, and five union states had their practice of slavery protected by the government;
(2) pursuing an official federal government policy of genocide against the Plains Indians, and confining others to reservations in conditions much worse than Southern slavery;
(3) confining American citizens of Japanese ancestry to internment camps;
(4) carrying out medical experiments (the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments) and mind-control and psychotropic drug experiments (CIA MK-Ultra) on American citizens without their knowledge and consent;
(5) practicing torture and terror in Central America (by the U.S. military and the CIA) during the Cold War;
(6) shooting and killing college students legally protesting the Vietnam war (Kent State);
(7) federal agency (CIA) trafficking cocaine;
(8) Federal agents, in illegal collusion with military personnel, murdering innocent men, women and childen ostensibly to "protect" them (Branch Davidians) from religious zealot leader;
(9) FBI sniper shooting an innocent woman in the back while she held her baby (Vicky Weaver);
(10) torturing prisoners of war in Iraq's Abu Ghraib, echoing the deliberate starvation and torture of Confederate POWs in Point Lookout, Elmira, Camp Douglas and other Union POW camps;
(11) the ATF selling guns to Mexican drug cartels...
There were 9 million Jews in Europe before WWII -- three million afterward. By contrast, the black/slave population of the United States grew at basically the same rate as the free/white population. Even during the violence and privation of war, the black population of the South grew about 7 percent. No similarity there.
In some Nazi death camps, inmates were literally worked to death. In North America, slaves were worked to death in the Caribbean, but not in the South, and certainly not during the four years of the Confederacy's existence. In fact, there were laws requiring that slaves be provided for in sickness and old age, when they could no longer work -- early, private sector versions of Medicare and Medicaid... No similarity there.
In some Nazi concentration camps, inmates were fed a diet scientifically calculated to starve them to death in three months. By contrast, in the South, both before, during and after the Confederacy, slaves ate basically the same thing most white people ate. Today, it's called "soul food" and it's considered tasty and nutritious, if a bit high in starch. No similarity there.
The Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The power to prohibit secession is not listed anywhere in the Constitution as a power granted to the United States.
The powers prohibited to the states are listed in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. Secession is not listed. It is therefore a power reserved to the states and the people.
The seceded states did not violate Section 10 (prohibition against joining confederacies) because no state was admitted to the Confederacy until after it seceded from the USA and was no longer subject to the Constitution.
Only those who owe allegiance to the U.S. can commit treason. Once the Southern states seceded, Southerners no longer owed allegiance to the United States.
The U.S. Code, Title 18 - Part I - Chapter 115
# 2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilt of treason.
A person who does NOT owe allegiance to the United States and is at war with them is an ENEMY, not a traitor.
GROW UP people, all of those wars are OVER including the CIVIL war....MOVE ON. Either Fly the AMERICAN FLAG or get out of our country.
I had a great grandfather that fought on the side of the south and I LOVE the south and grew up here but my country is the United States and NOT the Confederacy......and although I am proud of what my great grandfather did, I certainly am not going to fly the confederate flag ANYWHERE! Move on people and GROW UP! This country has many many more important things to worry about.
Nope, Confederate flags should be allowed just like others.
When the US fought for its independence from England, was slavery legal here and was there any writing to show that "all men created equal" was meant for slaves? Nope! As a matte of fact, some of the founding fathers owned slaves.
So, under which flag, the Stars and Stripes or the Star and Bars did slavery flourish? Once again, that would be good ol' Old Glory.
It appears that there are a lot of hypocits present in these comments.
The southern staes fought for EXACTLY the same reasons in their bid for independence that the 13 colonies fought for in their bid for independence from England. And, let's remember, there is STILL nothing in the Constitution that prohibits seceding from the US. Nothing at all. It was the northern states that insisted it was illegal and it was slavery that served as their "holy rallying cry".
Slaves were brought to this continent from the 1770's until the early 1860's. You'll find it in any book on US history. You DO READ, don't you?