Scana bans Confederate flag from company property

The State ^ | 8/15/02 | AP

[PJeffQ]

Posted on Thu, Aug. 15, 2002

Scana bans Confederate flag from company property

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Scana Corp. employees have been told to keep Confederate flag paraphernalia off company property.

South Carolina's largest utility also has ordered employees not to drive company vehicles to Maurice Bessinger's barbecue restaurants, The (Columbia) State reported Thursday.

Bessinger has been an outspoken Confederate flag supporter.

"Both the flag and Maurice Bessinger are divisive issues," said Scana spokeswoman Cathy Love. "For us to continue to be successful, we must have healthy, collaborative relationships with customers and co-workers. Divisive activities that disrupt harmony in the workplace are bad for business."

Bessinger said Scana's order was a "cowardly unconstitutional act."

"I have said before that one of our problems in trying to preserve our constitutional rights as a free people is simply a fact that the big corporations in this country have gotten in bed with the radical leftist NAACP and other pressure groups," Bessinger said Thursday in a statement.

Love didn't say whether Scana would fire workers for displaying the Confederate flag. She said any flag display "will be appropriately addressed by the company."

Scana, parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas and other subsidiaries, has 5,480 employees, including 2,219 in the Columbia area, where Bessinger's restaurants are located.

Love said Scana employees can eat at Bessinger's during their lunch hour. But they'll be expected to park company vehicles off the restaurants' property. Vehicles can go on the property if Bessinger's restaurants have electrical service problems, she said.

It's not the first boycott of Bessinger and his distinctive yellow barbeque sauce. In 2000, major retailers, such as Wal-Mart and Kroger, stopped selling Bessinger's sauces because of literature offered at his Columbia-area restaurants, including one tract that suggests early Africans liked slavery.

In his new self-published book, Bessinger claims black Americans preferred segregation.

He has sued retailers who removed his sauce from their shelves, saying his products were dropped because of his political and religious views.

Bessinger also has drawn criticism for replacing the U.S. flag at his restaurants with the Confederate flag. That came after the state Legislature, under pressure from a boycott led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, removed the Confederate flag from atop the Statehouse dome.

Although many state business leaders worked to remove the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome, Scana's action moves the state's long-standing battle over the Confederate flag to the business arena in dramatic fashion.

Ike McLeese, president and chief executive of the Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce, said the new flag ban might be an effort to head off further problems. McLeese said the company has had to deal with racial problems in its work force.

Earlier this year, a group of black SCE&G employees sued the company, saying it denied promotions to black workers and did little to counter racial insults and pranks by white co-workers. The company has denied the allegations.

Love said employee concerns triggered Scana's action, but she wouldn't discuss a specific complaint. She said the ban doesn't prevent workers from expressing views on their own time and away from company property.

"We are addressing issues related to Scana property, both at our physical work locations and regarding where our property goes."

The directives triggered outrage from a Confederate heritage group. Don Gordon, commander of the 250-plus-member Wade Hampton Camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said his group may sue Scana.

"This is a freedom of speech issue," he said. "It has fallen to the Sons of Confederate Veterans to defend our liberty."

Information from: The State

[pittsburgh gop guy]

If I had Nazi heritage, I would not celebrate it - unlike ignorant Southrons who celebrate a cause that kept a whole class of people enslaved based on the color of their skin. Read Uncle Tom's Cabin sometime and then get back to me on the JOYS OF SLAVERY. But since I don't - it's not an issue. It is a mighty fine book, written by a preacher's wife. But I guess you would dismiss it as Yankee propaganda.

[HoustonCurmudgeon]

Not that it means anything, but since you brought it up, you said all your family wore a uniform, does that include you?

United States Army 3-71 / 12-73

[AppyPappy]

If I had Nazi heritage, I would not celebrate it

Oh but you do. You are doing it here.

[pittsburgh gop guy]

Gee, calling someone a nazi, a page right out of a liberal's playbook; and as Ann Coulter so amply points out in her book, it demonstrates the absolute weakness of your argument.

At this point I will heed the advice of the person that said: "Never argue with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig likes it!" See ya!

[SandfleaCSC]

and killed rebel scum



This guy liked to do that too.

I read your post and I have to admit, I've made a complete 180 degree turn in my opinion of the history of the War Between the States. Thank you. You are right, the Confederates were nothing more than traitorous scum who started the war just to hold black folk down and annoy the hell out of Lincoln. I ,therefore, being about 5 generations removed from that scum, am treasonous rebel scum too. Could be worse I guess, you could have called me a Yankee. Under that same logic, with you being one generation removed German, you don't exactly have the moral highground here. At least all those thousands of loyal American patriots the Confederates killed were armed and could fight back.

FReegards,
Sandflea

[stainlessbanner]

Good analogy. Also, Welcome to FR!
I know I'm a few months late : )

[stainlessbanner]

Fire up your smokers and bring some Maurice's!

[PJeffQ]

so a privately owned vehicle with a bumper sticker certain segments of the population dont like in the parking lot of a private holding company is government endorsement? you have the issues confused...

[Sloth]

Bessinger is a mindless bigot. But SCANA should mind their own business.

[HIDEK6]

Private Citizens can show their ignorance, disguised as Southron pride,

Hey y'all!

Look at Joe Ignorance!

[GOPcapitalist]

Gee, calling someone a nazi, a page right out of a liberal's playbook; and as Ann Coulter so amply points out in her book, it demonstrates the absolute weakness of your argument.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you not the same guy who regularly compares the confederate and nazi flags? Are you not the same guy who recently asserted in a now-removed post that a confederate museum should sell its holdings because the same people who buy nazi crap will buy it? If that type of behavior demonstrates the weakness of one's argument, consider yourself defeated as that very same tactic is your ONLY argument.

You know, you shouldn't try to pick a speck out of somebody else's eye when you've got a log sticking out of your own.

[PJeffQ]

New thread:
Senator wants Legislature to punish SCANA for Confederate flag rule

[Nellie Wilkerson]

The South was right. Still is.