Posted on 06/12/2005 3:25:21 PM PDT by QwertyKPH
MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.(AP) _ If Crystal Hunt and Marquita Jackson were looking to draw attention, they succeeded. Wolf whistles and honking horns followed the bikini-clad duo as they strutted down Ocean Boulevard.
Hunt was wearing a red-white-and-blue Confederate battle flag wrap over her white two-piece, Jackson a bra bearing the familiar diagonal blue cross and white stars co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan. You could say the two black women were thumbing their noses at the NAACP's 5-year-old boycott of South Carolina except for one thing: Neither of the 21-year-old North Carolina women had any idea there even was a boycott.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People started the boycott in 2000 to get the Confederate battle flag off the South Carolina statehouse dome. That goal was achieved in July of that year, but the organization continued the sanctions when the flag was moved to a memorial on the statehouse grounds _ a place of honor the group feels the flag doesn't deserve.
But judging from the columns of black motorcyclists zooming up and down the Grand Strand during the recent ``Black Bike Week,'' few are heeding the call.
``I spend my money wherever I want to,'' Jackson, a stay-at-home mom from Fayetteville, N.C., said defiantly as she headed for the beach Memorial Day weekend. ``They don't give it to me.''
In the heady early days of the boycott, business and civic organizations canceled conventions at Palmetto State venues and pickets stood vigil at highway welcome centers. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, under pressure from black coaches, declared a moratorium on scheduling new events in South Carolina or Mississippi, whose state flag incorporates the Confederate banner.
The NCAA moratorium still stands, and some presidential candidates campaigning in the state last year were careful to bring their own food and stay at supporters' homes to avoid feeding the local economy. But the boycott has largely slipped from the public eye and out of most people's minds.
``I'll be honest with you, we no longer see any significant or measurable impact from that _ haven't since the flag came down,'' said Marion Edmonds, spokesman for the Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism.
The NAACP insists the boycott is still having an effect. But hard numbers are difficult to come by.
If there has been an effect, it is not reflected in tourism-related tax collections, Edmonds said. According to his agency, accommodations tax receipts increased $3.5 million during the boycott period, and admissions tax collections grew $2.5 million _ slow but steady.
Edmonds thinks event planners saw the removal of the flag from the statehouse dome _ where it was raised to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War and remained flying in defiance of the civil rights movement _ as ``a good-faith effort.''
Steve Camp, president of the Midlands Authority for Conventions Sports and Tourism in the state capital of Columbia, said he still fields calls about whether the boycott is on _ and still has people tell him they'll take their convention business elsewhere.
``I don't know that we lose money,'' he said. ``I think that we lose opportunity.''
For instance, Camp would love to pursue the NCAA men's basketball tournament, but he knows that's a nonstarter as long as that flag remains on the statehouse grounds. In the meantime, he's grateful that organizations like the Eastern Intercollegiate Athletic Association _ a small conference of historically black Southern colleges _ agreed to return its basketball tournament to Columbia this year.
``We just need to leave that issue alone,'' said conference President Willie Jefferson. ``We can call for that boycott from now to the 22nd century, and things still will not change.''
Dwight James, executive director of the NAACP's state conference, said the need to maintain the boycott transcends mundane economics. He said one need only have attended the black biker festival over the Memorial Day holiday in Myrtle Beach to witness ``the Confederate mentality'' that he sees as still rampant in South Carolina.
When the predominantly white Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealers Association held its annual rally in the beach resort the week before, traffic along Ocean Boulevard was the usual two-way affair. But when the black riders came to town, orange cones went up, and the popular strip was limited to southbound traffic only.
For two years, the NAACP has battled the city in federal court over what the organization sees as an ``apartheid traffic pattern'' imposed during the five-day festival.
Though angry over the one-way traffic and jacked-up hotel rates, the black bikers were not going to let their fun in the sun be spoiled by a perceived hostile environment _ or by a boycott called by NAACP officials.
``I mean, they represent me and stuff, but at the same time they do expect a whole lot,'' said Maurice Christian, a 28-year-old car dealer from Raleigh, N.C.
Some visitors questioned the very logic of the boycott. Sitting in a lawn chair outside his hotel on the strip, Lamar Banks, an Air Force staff sergeant from Hampton, Va., said:
``Most of the people working in these hotels, cleaning the rooms, sitting at the front desk are African-American. So if we don't come down here, then we're taking money out of their pocket and food off their table. How's that helping us as a whole?''
Hunt, one of the bathing suit rebels, feels the NAACP should be focusing on more important things, like educating poor black youth. If the boycott hasn't achieved its objective in five years, she said, it never will.
``It's silly,'' said Hunt, a criminal justice student at Fayetteville State University. ``It's a new millennium. Everybody's not worried about a flag.''
The ONLY thing the corrupt, ignorant, racist NAACP has been successful in accomplishing the past 40 years -- is to keep too many black Americans in proverty, ignorance and solidly imprisoned on the Democrat plantation...
Nothing more....
The poverty pimps like Jesse, Al, and Calypso Louie live well ---- don't cha know...
Semper Fi
No, but you did ask.
Reply #16:
But why does the KKK and such other white groups wave it around during their ceremonies?
I assumed that you knew they were free to do so and was wondering why you asked.
So why were the two ladies wearing it since they didnt know it was a boycott going on? Were they mocking it or what?
That's because the KKK and other like white organizations are full of ignorant racists... just like the NAACP.
They were wearing the bikinis because they wanted to. The gal said she didn't know there was a boycott, how could that be mocking it? Obviously there are blacks who aren't offended by the Confederate battle flag.
Gee, I went out to dinner tonight in Murrells Inlet and had to wait 45 minutes for a table. I guess not many people heard about the boycott....LOL
This requires quite a bit more intense study, if you ask me.
Hollings ( a democrat - ) brought the confederate flag back to SC in the late 1960's because he was trying to stick it to the civil rights movement. Democrats like to tell people that all racist became Republicans, but other than Maddox I can't think of one pol who switched. Byrd (D), the ex KKK guy, is still in the Senate.
I always wondered how a boycott of a state that is heavily black is supposed to help blacks.
Some visitors questioned the very logic of the boycott. Sitting in a lawn chair outside his hotel on the strip, Lamar Banks, an Air Force staff sergeant from Hampton, Va., said:
``Most of the people working in these hotels, cleaning the rooms, sitting at the front desk are African-American. So if we don't come down here, then we're taking money out of their pocket and food off their table. How's that helping us as a whole?''
Sounds like this guy gets it.
I agree--except lets not forget Strom and Lott. Other than that, none i think.
As for the non-converts... With Pat, I might agree with him on many things but he's an embarrassment. And Baker III is horrid when it comes to Jews. Other than that, i think we are clean.
And if we ever wanted a definition of a racist leftist, we could look to Margarete Sanger.
And with all that said, there are still plenty of backward people who will never know what either flag--Union and Confederate--actually mean.
What about Dean? Switch the word Jew for the words "white Christian" and you've got a real brown shirt. Dean's comments about Republicans, blacks and hotels is racist beyond the pale. Maybe Dean doesn't understand lots of black business people stay in upscale hotels. They're not all working as waiter serving white people... Other than that, I lived in the South when it was racist - and the dems then are the dems now. They've gone from all blacks are bad, to all blacks are good. Both positions are racist.
I'm so sick of him. And yet...
Schadenfreude.
"But he's just trying to shore up the base!"
"But why does the KKK and such other white groups wave it around during their ceremonies?"
Ignorance of history. Anyway, the KKK of Reconstruction (it lasted 3 years) is much different from the KKK that was set up during the 20th century.
"Why the Confederate flag?"
Read history, not the myths we been told, but real history. The Republic of the Founding Fathers died after the South was illegally and unconstitutionally invaded and lost the War Between The States. A better and more accurate name for it is the War for the Destruction of the South.
That I'm aware of. Started out as a political organization, not to mention that some Jews were in it, and ended up as a Nazi-style white nationalist bunch. Both were bad, but the 1920 one was much worse.
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