Posted on 07/18/2006 12:49:14 PM PDT by aomagrat
A Confederate heritage group says its free-speech rights were violated when a landowner removed a billboard promoting Southern history near the famed Darlington Raceway.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to demonstrate at the State House next month and buy radio advertisements to complain about losing its billboard on U.S. 52, about two miles from the racetrack.
“This is the most chilling thing I’ve seen against freedom of speech,” spokesman Don Gordon said.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the billboard this spring in response to remarks by a NASCAR executive about the rebel flag.
The billboard featured a Confederate flag and a checkered race flag. The message said, “Victory is Great, but Honor is Greater. Defend your Southern heritage.”
The billboard, taken down briefly in May, also listed the group’s phone number and name.
Officials of the S.C. Central Railroad, which owns the land where the billboard stood, said the message was “controversial” and needed to come down.
“It is not in our commercial interests to have billboards on our property displaying messages that might be controversial in the local community, whatever the substance of the messages,” a company spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.
“We made no judgment as to the content of the billboard, but we did understand it to be controversial and therefore asked that it be removed.”
An outdoor advertising company, hired by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, installed the sign just before Darlington’s annual Mother’s Day race. It was removed permanently June 16, according to a July 11 letter from the S.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans commander, Randall Burbage, to fellow members.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans says it is an international, nonprofit historical society. The group, which says it has 30,000 members nationally, has taken positions in defense of the Confederate flag in South Carolina.
‘NOT ... ANYTHING FAVORABLE’
In October, NASCAR’s chief executive, Brian France, told the CBS television show “60 Minutes” the Confederate flag was “not a flag that I look at with anything favorable. That’s for sure.”
As it branches away from its traditional Southern fan base, NASCAR has tried to shed its rebel-flag-waving image. The nation’s largest stock car racing organization has started diversity programs and tried to appeal to black and Hispanic fans. The Darlington Raceway, in business for more than 50 years, has served as a pillar of NASCAR.
“A member of the France family said some uncomplimentary things, so we put that billboard up to make a statement and to stimulate new members,” the confederate veterans’ Gordon said. “We really didn’t expect anything like this to occur.”
Attempts to reach NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter were unsuccessful. However, Hunter said last spring that NASCAR did not seek to have the sign removed.
“If we find out NASCAR is involved, you can expect airplanes towing Confederate banners over every NASCAR race anywhere in this nation — forever,” Gordon said.
Mac Josey, vice president at the Darlington Raceway, said he knew nothing about the billboard and did not ask that it be removed. He said the track does not fly Confederate flags, although some fans do.
Wesley Blackwell, chairman of the Darlington County Council, said he heard about the billboard during a social gathering at the Darlington speedway in May. Blackwell said the county did not ask that the sign be removed.
‘NOT A WORD WOULD BE SAID’
The Confederate veterans group paid Palmetto Outdoor Media more than $5,000 to put up the advertisement, Gordon said. Most of the money was refunded when the sign was removed.
However, Gordon is not satisfied.
“What if it was a sign trying to bring new members to the NAACP? We all know not a word would be said,” Gordon said.
Palmetto Outdoor Media co-owner Rodney Monroe said his company’s land-lease agreement with S.C. Central Railroad has a section that called for the removal of offensive advertisements.
“We lease the property from the company and we, obviously, crossed the line as far as what was acceptable to them ... and were asked to remove the sign,” Monroe said. “We are not in the business to cause or create controversy.”
Gordon said his group had a contract with Palmetto Outdoor for the sign to stay up through part of next year.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees every American the right to free speech. However, the sign was on private property, and the property’s owner ordered it down.
Bill Rogers, director of the S.C. Press Association, said that removal violated the principle of free speech, if nothing else. The sign did not appear to be inflammatory, he said.
“I can see why they would feel their rights are violated, that if someone doesn’t like the message, they take it down,” Rogers said.
Food and munitions?
What if we put in say a different word instead of "southern" and removed the flag?
How about.....
German?
Or Japanese?
Or Nazi?
Or Bushido?
Or Communist?
Or Klan?
Or even Democrat?
See how that works? You could make the case that anyone of the above would fit perfectly in place of Southern and convey the same exact message.
Victory is great but getting your butt beaten down every time you open your pie holes about how losing is somehow more honorable then victory because you lost so well is just plain stupid.
I'm sure that sort of message really appealed to a lot of Nascar fans
Yep, Olde Dicky Spude sure ran one hell of a race and would have won it too iffen he hadn't blown all four tires on the first lap and flipped his car about a zillion times in the infield and got in a fight with the paramedics, but he ran a honorable race.
Southern heritage is based upon the assumption that Democrats were right to rebel against the government because they could not change it to meet their expectations of it.
Or put another way, in simpler terms even all but the dumbest Southerners could understand,
if you can't change the government, leave the country.
Or in even simpler terms a child would understand....
Don't like the rules of the game, take your ball and go home.
Of course if you are going to lose and lose badly because your cause is WRONG, remember to do it with honor, so you can celebrate how well you lost for the next 140 years.
The trick of course to any successful rebellion is to make the country you are rebelling against want to let you go in the first place.
Can you honestly say that the south would have been better off with country devoted to slavery under the democrats?
Memo to Yankee:
It isn't over till WE say it's over.
And....we aren't forgetting OR forgiving.
Not accepting orders from Robert E. Lee?
You really have gone too far, calling men who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for a cause they believed in, and who lost, "whiny damned losers".
Any further comment to express my outrage at your derision would have me permanently banned from this board.
It is not a question of worshipping the Confederate battle flag, any more than the stars and stripes, but the heritage it represents, and right now the latter seems to be suffused with more whiny damned losers than any other on the planet, with the possible exception of the French. Why else would they have sought to have the billboard removed?
lol
you're nothing but a troll
go crawl back under your bridge.
You do realize that it took an amendment to the Constitution before that happened, it didn't just fade away?
Or that had it remained legal eventually it would have required an amendment anyway to end slavery. The whole idea that Slavery would have ended on it's own any way, negates the very reasons for the democrat's rebellion against The United States, by your logic there was no reason to rebel in the first place.
Yeah I know "states rights", states rights to what? maintain slavery as an institution? Let me make this real simple for everyone that thinks this wasn't about slavery.
Show me one southern state in 1860 that wasrun by Republicans and seceded from the United States for the purposes of abolishing slavery as it existed in the Constitution, show me just one, that's all I ask and if you can, I'll admit defeat honorable.
I don't have a problem with SCVs sign, but it was on private property. I don't have to provide a forum with my personal property for anyone who wants it and neither does anyone else. If the government had been the one that decided the sign was inappropriate it would be different, IMO.
You're wasting your time Godebert, he agitates on more threads than just these. It's best to not feed the trolls; they eventually get bored and go away.
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