Group Plans Giant Battle Flag Display Across from Historically Black College in Downtown Montgomery, AL

Via the Montgomery AdvertiserGroups plan Confederate monument, large flag across from ASU

Members of three Confederate groups are planning to erect a monument featuring a large Confederate flag in front of Alabama State University, the nation’s oldest state-sponsored historically black college, the Tallassee Tribune reported on Wednesday.

According to the Tribune, leaders of the Tallassee chapter of Sons of Confederate Veterans, Tallassee Armory Guard and First Capitol Flaggers announced at a meeting this week that donations had been given to support the building of the site, which will be located along Interstate 85 on land donated by a Montgomery doctor.

The group wouldn’t provide the name of the doctor because it didn’t want people to “pitch a fit.”

A leader of the Tallassee Confederate Veterans group, Dana Jones, told the newspaper the flag pole would be 50 feet tall and that she hoped “everyone can see it.”

When WACQ owner Fred Randall Hughey told the gathered crowd where the flag would be located – directly across from ASU – a loud cheer went up.

When asked about the message the flag’s location might send, given the current racial climate in the country, Jones said her group had no intentions of antagonizing.

I’m sure.

For those unfamiliar with the area, this would be right in middle of Montgomery in terms of interstate traffic.   We already have a giant battle flag north of town on I-65. 

Ugh.

FILED UNDER: US Politics, ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. humanoid.panda says:

    HERITAGE NOT HATE.

  2. Gromitt Gunn says:

    Alright, are we at the point yet where we just buy these people their own large desolate island nation to run into the ground?

  3. CSK says:

    @Gromitt Gunn:

    They can take Trump as their leader/president/king/whatever. He already has the support of all the white supremacist organizations.

  4. Turn Hearts says:

    To the Confederate group setting up the giant battle flag: Please also collect and set up all the rejected/discarded Confederate memorials from across the South like the ones voted out in New Orleans. It is good that you are adding to and not taking away from the Southern history. Keep up this needed work…

  5. Robin O says:

    I would like to “pitch a fit”…respectfully, of course…

  6. Franklin says:

    Jones said her group had no intentions of antagonizing.

    To which Dr. Taylor replies:

    I’m sure.

    Couldn’t have said it better myself. Poor little babies are not only pretending to be the victims, but are rubbing it in the face of the true victims.

  7. @Turn Hearts: The thing is, knowledge, let along understanding, is not conveyed by looking at a flag (or a monument, although in that case maybe some bare facts might be learned such as the date an event took place).

    The notion that history is taught by these things suggests a very scant idea of what teaching, learning, and history itself are.

  8. @Franklin: Indeed. This gives it away (as if the act itself itself didn’t on its face:

    When WACQ owner Fred Randall Hughey told the gathered crowd where the flag would be located – directly across from ASU – a loud cheer went up.

  9. Bookdragon says:

    Lovely. They might as well show their true colors as it were and fly a KKK flag and a Nazi flag right beside it.

  10. An Interested Party says:

    Once the flag is erected, poetic justice would involve people disguised in white bedsheets taking some flammable-friendly materials to distribute on the flag…

  11. Feminists are Lesbians says:

    I bet all the pinko Libtards would like to see the confederate flag of individual rights replaced with the faggot rainbow flag of collectivism.

  12. Slugger says:

    @Feminists are Lesbians: Why, yes, I would.

  13. CIA Jon says:

    What if Germany celebrated their heritage of once being the most powerful nations in the world in the 40’s? There are things in heritage to admire or be proud of. The Confederacy is not one of theme. Stop acting like Russians who celebrate the Soviet era.

  14. Gustopher says:

    @Bookdragon: is there a KKK flag separate from the Confederate Battle Flag?

    I suppose there probably is, but I think the popular image of the KKK includes the battle flag.

  15. John Peabody says:

    In early newsreel films from the 1920s, KKK marchers waved normal US flags, not the battle flag.

  16. Mikey says:

    @John Peabody: The battle flag had dropped into near-obscurity before it was resurrected during the 1960s in response to the advance of African-American civil rights.

    But, you know, “heritage not hate,” blah blah blah.

  17. @Feminists are Lesbians: So, you are hear to help prove the point that supporters of the battle flag tend to be bigots?

  18. @Mikey: Yes, I think this is key point that undercuts that this is about history or some vague notion of pride. The flag became prominent in US politics as an anti-desegregation symbol. That is the heritage it chiefly represents.

  19. PJ says:

    @Feminists are Lesbians:

    I bet all the pinko Libtards would like to see the confederate flag of individual rights replaced with the faggot rainbow flag of collectivism.

    Individual rights? I’m pretty certain the talking points for defending that racist flag say states rights? Because I’m quite certain that the flag has never been about individual rights for non whites. It has always been about individual rights for some in an apartheid state. Like the apartheid South African flag patches worn by Dylann Roof.

  20. Robert says:
  21. al-Ameda says:

    @Feminists are Lesbians:

    I bet all the pinko Libtards would like to see the confederate flag of individual rights replaced with the faggot rainbow flag of collectivism.

    I’ll bet that if you open those black-out drapes a bit
    you can see the North Korean Flag.