Protestors separated during Confederate flag debate

Nola.com ^ | 13 July 2002 | AP

[stainlessbanner]

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) -- Using metal barricades, police separated protesters, including NAACP members and a David Duke-founded group, that clashed over a newly resurrected Confederate flag display on Saturday.

Eugene Bryant, the Mississippi president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told about 40 anti-flag protesters the debate should move to the negotiating table.

"We would rather negotiate than demonstrate," he said.

Harrison County supervisors on Tuesday returned the Confederate flag to an eight-flag beachfront display representing the governments that have ruled here since 1699.

Supervisors took the flag down two years ago amid protests and flag thefts, but officials voted in May to put it back up.

On Saturday, flag supporters and opponents dueled on the beach with signs, flag displays and words.

Bryant said Coast NAACP chapters will arrange meetings with business and religious leaders to urge supervisors to remove the Confederate flag.

About five members of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization joined some 20 pro-flag demonstrators. EURO is affiliated with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Vincent Breeding of New Orleans, EURO's national director, said anti-flag protesters were trying to "intimidate" county officials into taking the flag down.

Bryant used fiery rhetoric to denounce flag supporters.

"At a time when this nation should be united, some members of the Harrison County Board of Supervisors seem to be united in pushing the agenda of the Ku Klux Klan -- hate, racism and division," Bryant said.

David Marney of New Orleans said a friend from Bay St. Louis has been sending him newspaper clippings about the flag controversy.

"It's a ridiculous thing to be fighting over," Marney said. "This is helping Mississippi and the Coast keep a really bad image."

[lodwick]

bttt

[Austin Willard Wright]

I don't know about the Klan but the racist white mobs in 1955 who drove out Autherine Lucy (the first black student at the University of Alabama) were waving Confederate, not American, flags.

[stand watie]

NONE, hopefully. i wish DD would just fade away.

FREE dixie,msw

[stand watie]

YEP that's true, and the RACIST MOBS in BOSTON wave the CROSS of our HOLY SAVIOR & the Stars & Stripes.

should we stop showing those symbols in public too?

FREE dixie NOW,sw

[billbears]

Of course sw. That's the next step. If we gave up our symbols within 20 years, these racist groups would be after both the Christian flag and the US flag. Which makes the battle for the true flag of freedom, that of the Confederacy, an even more important fight

[Austin Willard Wright]

I wasn't trying to get into an ideological argument. I merely pointed out a historical fact that the racist mobs in 1955 used the Confederate flag. I was responding to the poster who said that the Klan didn't using the CSA flag before the 1960s. If you have historical facts to dispute (or confirm) this claim, then you will be addressing the point I made.

[stand watie]

i couldn't have said it better! BRAVO!

for a FREE dixie,sw

[stand watie]

while i can NOT discount that the damnfools/creeps/scum of the KKK mis-used & degraded our sacred CSA flag before 1960 or any other date for that matter, THREE things are UNDISPUTEDLY TRUE:

1. ALL the images of flags i've seen abused by the klan on the History Channel are of US rather than CS flags &

2.the CROSS of JESUS CHRIST is in ALL of the images.

3.only scalawags are LOWER than the kkk and NOTHING is lower than a scalawag. NOTHING!

for dixie LIBERTY,sw

[PJeffQ]

Where were the ships that brought slaves to the Colonies and later the US registered?

[Non-Sequitur]

ALL the images of flags i've seen abused by the klan on the History Channel are of US rather than CS flags

History Channel? Isn't that damnyankee propaganda? Anyway, here. Expand your horizons. All of these were taken a lot later than the 1960's.

[Non-Sequitur]

Where were the ships that brought slaves to the Colonies and later the US registered?

Depended on the home port. Some were registered in Boston. Some were registered in Charleston. After 1808 none were officially registered in the U.S. but just about all their cargo was destined for the south.

[PJeffQ]

1920's March In Washington, DC

[Eaker]

And FWIW, the Confederacy was just the Klan without the masks.

More proof that you are an idiot.

[sonofron]

"You need to see "Birth of a Nation." It comes on the History Channel and sometimes AMC late at night"

When this movie was made the kkk was virtually nonexistent. If fact, it had been about 30-40 years since significant klan activity when that movie was made. It's unfortunate for the southerners who want to honor their dead who fought under that flag. Along with the kkk, the politicians in the south who oppossed segregation used this flag as a symbol of resistance. This only did further damage for legitimate use of the flag. For example putting it on top of the S.C. capitol building(state house or whatever). I have the flag and it makes me think about those who died fighting for a dream of a free country, seperate from the northerners who wanted to control their lives. Slavery was part of it, but i agree it would've been abolished shortly after the war. The war was over states rights first, then slavery was used to get more recruits for the north because they kept getting their arses handed to them by the army of northern virginia.

[Non-Sequitur]

I suppose it's pointless to mention that the pictures I posted are 60 or 70 years more recent than the pictures you posted? In other words, they're more recent history.

[sonofron]

some years back i read the kkk was going by the Christian Knights of the KKK, i guess we gotta go and ban christianity because the kkk is using it, darn.

[Non-Sequitur]

No, that would be an overreaction. I'm just pointing out to all these hate-mongers who talk about an 'official flag' of the KKK that that organization has been known to misuse the confederate flag as well. And, it seems, more recently and more enthusiastically.

[billbears]

I suppose it's pointless to point out that the fact that these newer pictures show morons carrying the flag of freedom is just proof that the government propaganda centers have done an excellent job at revising history to fit the US PC perception. The older pics are when this band of idiots knew the truth of the attitudes towards blacks in the north and how it was carried down to our fine region after the War

[Non-Sequitur]

No, but you can point out that for some reason these morons seem to connect with the confederacy more than with the United States. Maybe it's because 'old times there are not forgotten' and they pine for slavery, the Black Codes and Jim Crow? Who knows what is going through their 9 volt brains? But the pictures speak for themselves.

[Colt .45]

HEY ... DUDE ... how long have been a socialist PC whore?