Rebs Warn Reps Over Flag
Defenders of the Confederate flag atop South Carolina's Statehouse rallied here on Sunday to tell lawmakers to keep the banner waving or risk losing re-election in November.
State Sen. Arthur Ravenel asked the crowd of nearly 1,000 -- some from as far away as Georgia and Louisiana -- to fill the Statehouse on Wednesday, when the Senate begins its first debate on various proposals to remove the flag.
Dozens of people hoisted a 4,000-square-foot battle flag on the east side of Marion Square downtown.
"Wednesday is kind of an Armageddon for the dignity of the battle flag," Ravenel said. "We're outnumbered and outgunned. We need everyone who is retired or can take time off to come up to Columbia to be in the balcony, to be in the hall when the Senate starts to debate this."
The pro-flag rally came a week after Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. led hundreds of supporters on a five-day, 120-mile march to Columbia to ask lawmakers to remove the flag.
Matthew Collins of John's Island said he wouldn't object to the flag being moved to one of the monuments on the Statehouse grounds.
"I don't mind if you take it off the dome. Up there it's a speck," Collins said.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has called for an economic boycott of the state until the flag is removed. The civil rights group said the flag is a symbol racism and slavery.
State Sen. Glenn McConnell said Riley's marchers and the NAACP want to wipe out Southern heritage.
"These colors represent people's bloodshed for principles. It doesn't represent slavery," said McConnell, who owns a Confederate memorabilia shop in Charleston. "Don't let them seduce you to animosity toward your fellow South Carolinians."
R.C. Tanner, of Pinopolis, said the pro-flag side had been too nice for too long. He was heckled by Sons of Confederate Veterans for walking through the crowd with a sign that read "Send the NAACP back to Africa where black dictators belong."
The Rev. Bobby Eubanks of Summerville, South Carolina, is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and he explained why Tanner was heckled.
"We want to avoid any exchanges of hate language or rhetoric and that's what they were perceiving it (the sign) to be," said Eubanks.
He feels the Confederate flag opponents are over-reacting to the use of the flag. "What they're doing is using past history, of white supremicist groups like the KKK to misrepresent our symbols," he said.
Eubanks, who is also a spokesman for the pro-flag South Carolina Heritage Coalition, thinks the legislators are trying to come up with a compromise, and he's against it.
"I don't think they need to compromise. If they start this kind of legislation, coercion with the threat of a boycott, it'll never end. Different fringe groups will always use this methodology to try to get legislation changed throuh the use of boycotts or threats," said Eubanks.
Rev. Joe Darby, a spokesman for the NAACP in Charleston, points out that, "You cannot escape the fact that the Confederacy defended the right of states to hold slaves. That was the crux of the Civil War."
"One only has to look at the voting records of the most strident flag defenders to see a pattern of prejudice in operation. It's past history that lingers to the present day."
Darby says that there were banners at the rally which said, "John Rocker for President" and "If we'd known there'd be this much trouble, we would have picked our own cotton."
"I don't think that the heritage can be fairly divided from the racial prejudice," said Darby.
CBS News Reporter Jim Krasula reports that there is one thing those on both sides of the flag debate agree on -- it's hurting the state's image.