Gephardt says Confederate flag condemnation doesn't apply to private property

AP | 3/09/03 | SCOTT CHARTON

[kattracks]

HANNIBAL, Mo. (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, who said on a South Carolina campaign stop that the Confederate battle flag shouldn't fly "anytime, anywhere," now says he did not mean people should be barred from displaying the flag on their own property.

"My position is clear: I think it's inappropriate to fly the Confederate flag in public places," the Missouri congressman said Saturday.

"It's a hurtful, divisive symbol in our country, and it just shouldn't be in public places. They're free to do whatever they want in private property."

Campaigning in South Carolina in January, Gephardt said in a statement that the Confederate battle flag should no longer fly "anytime, anywhere" in the United States.

On Saturday, Gephardt told The Associated Press he intended his statement to apply only to flag displays on public property, because "that's what the issue was in South Carolina."

The NAACP has a continuing tourism boycott against South Carolina because of the flag's display at a Confederate memorial on Statehouse grounds. The NAACP contends the flag, which formerly flew from the Capitol dome and was moved as a compromise, should not be flown in a "place of sovereignty."

On another subject, Gephardt said Saturday he will accept public financing, and its spending limits, for his presidential campaign. He is the sixth of the nine announced Democratic candidates to decide to campaign with public money, as he did when he ran for the party's nomination in 1988.

After Gephardt made the flag comment in South Carolina, the AP reported the Confederate battle flag had flown for decades at two state-run historic sites in Missouri. Gephardt's spokesman said the congressman was unaware of that but thought those flags should come down.

At the behest of Democratic Gov. Bob Holden's office, the director of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources ordered the flags to come down at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville and at Fort Davidson, site of the 1864 Battle of Pilot Knob. Missouri was a slave state under the 1821 Missouri Compromise but did not join the Civil War confederacy.

Reaction to the flags' removal included two marches to the Governor's Mansion by Southern heritage groups and complaining letters to editors.

Saturday night, as Gephardt entered a Democratic banquet in Hannibal, he paused on his way to the podium to wave. Three men stood from their seats at the table beside him and silently help up small confederate flags.

[areafiftyone]

HE BAD!!! He is going to lose democreeps votes! snicker snicker!

[Democratshavenobrains]

Wow, so he's saying that Americans have the right to do whatever we want with our private property? I guess in the Democrat party, this is considered a bold move.

[Tennessee_Bob]

I wonder how he'd feel about my Confederate Battle Flag? It flies on my left bicep, with the word Tennessee under it.

[dagnabbit]

Give it up Dems. Al Sharpton is going to win Southern primaries in the freak show you call a political party. No amount of shilling and pandering to the "base" is going to make the jogging-suit wearer go away.

[Sacajaweau]

I can't see anything more notable as "private" than the burial plot of a Confederate Veteran. Southern & Northern Generals continue to get their due as Leaders yet the ordinary Confederate soldier continues to be harrassed. He died for this country is without a doubt. The losing side also won in the end. We remain a Union of Free and Independent States.

[TYVets]

My Missouri Grandad didn't express his feelings about the Civil War.

Would he vote for a yankee demorat congressman with a clammy handshake?

NEVER

[tessalu]

The Confederate flag is just a part of history, and it is not about if you liked history or not. We can not change history, so stop playing a fool.

[Missouri]

>>Saturday night, as Gephardt entered a Democratic banquet in Hannibal, he paused on his way to the podium to wave. Three men stood from their seats at the table beside him and silently help up small confederate flags.<<


Good story. I didn't see anything about this in the St. Louis Post-Disgrace, I mean Dispatch (on-line version).
Did I miss it or is the newspaper trying to hide the fact that 2/3 of Missourians disagree with Gephardt on removal of the battle flag from the two historical sights?

[henderson field]

If the NAACP spent as much time and money on getting black kids a college education, they could realize their dream of a segregated society with a black middle class. They are wasting valuable resources on this Confederate flag issue. After they get rid of it, they'll go after the U.S. flag next.

[Liz]

"I'll show dat suckah Clintun who de first Black president be."

[CarmelValleyite]

Gephardt weasels out of his earlier stance, alienating Dems in an attempt to bring in Repubs/conservatives. I think we'll be seeing a LOT of this sort of thing from the whole batch of Dem pres. hopefuls. Idiots!

[HHFi]

This entire issue was concocted by the NAACP to save their irrelevant organization. Just follow the money. As recently as ten or so years ago, hardly anybody gave the flag or the NAACP a second thought. NAACP membership had plummeted, their leaders had embezzled all the money and disgraced the group, and even their name was an anachronism. They obviously had done nothing at all to help black Americans with the real problems they were facing: rotten schools, drugs, gang violence, etc. They desperately needed a straw man to pound on and yell about to divert attention from their own abject failure. So lo and behold, they disinterred Jefferson Davis' moldering corpse and the great Confederate flag issue was born.

Nobody ever asks them, if the Confederate flag really is so offensive on such a visceral level to them, why did they never show up and stage big protest rallies at Lynyrnd Skynryd concerts in the 1970s? Answer: because they hadn't realized at that point how much they were going to need a sham issue like this to be offended by.

[dixierose]

Good question...I have a "dixie rose" on my left shoulder.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

This nonsense about the confederate flag is just another attempt to control free speech.The constitution does not say that your speech must be pleasing or agreed upon before you excerise it.One of these days,they will try to force their(pc)will on the wrong person!