Mall boots kiosk selling Confederate flag clothing

TuscaloosaNews ^ | December 13, 2002 | AP

[stainlessbanner]

The manager of a Mobile mall has evicted a merchant selling clothing with Confederate battle flag designs, citing complaints from people angered by the merchandise.

The merchant, Camo Unlimited, opened a kiosk in Colonial Mall Bel Air just after Thanksgiving. The Blountsville-based company sells Dixie Outfitters clothing at the Mobile mall and at other malls throughout the Southeast, owner Toby Smith said.

Dixie Outfitters offers more than 600 designs with themes such as hunting, trucks and dogs, all including the stars and bars of the Confederate battle flag. The clothing line's "Legends of the Confederacy" series features generals and other leaders of the Confederacy.

Smith said that soon after he opened the kiosk, employees of another store at the mall complained. Soon afterward, the mall's management told him to clear out by Sunday.

Tim Nolan, the mall's general manager, said he heard from several people who indicated the store could spur a boycott of the mall.

"May I remind you that blacks and other minorities constitute a major portion of consumers who patronize Colonial Bel Air Mall," chapter president Lettie Malone wrote in a Dec. 5 letter to Nolan.

"They should not be embarrassed or made to feel uncomfortable by those who are still fighting and trying to revive a war that never should have been a part of our civilized society."

The state president of the NAACP, the Rev. R.L. Shanklin, said the group never had plans for a boycott, and that he would have to approve any boycott carried out by the organization.

Nevertheless, Nolan said the mall was in an "emotionally charged controversy that we didn't want to be in the middle of."

"There was going to be no easy decision," he told the Mobile Register. "Certainly customers are disappointed that we took them out. Customers would have been disappointed had we left them in."

Asked whether he thought his clothing was offensive, Dixie Outfitters owner Dewey Barber said, "We certainly don't put any designs out there that we feel are offensive to anyone."

Dixie Outfitters' Web site has links and news stories about the Battle Flag, and in a section called "Our Mission" it states:

"The truth about the Confederate Flag is that it has nothing to do with racism or hate. The Civil War was not fought over slavery or racism. We at Dixie Outfitters are trying to tell the real truth via our art and products in regards to the Confederate Flag."

Ben George, head of a local Sons of Confederate Veterans camp, said he was considering a protest against the eviction.

[Bluntpoint]

Please tell me that Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were your favorite presidents. The bravest generals were Grant and Lee. That you plan to spend your vacation north and south of the Mason Dixon line.

[Non-Sequitur]

Your half right in each case.

[agrandis]

Or the that the south is not God's mistress.

Who? What?

[Colt .45]

IF the war had been solely about slavery, you might have a point, but the issues were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more complex. Slavery was a rallying cry for the Southerners to reach the boiling point, the real issue was a State's Right of Self-Determination ... something that the Founders' had bequeathed to us. The Constitution was a compact of sovereign and independent states and the states never did surrender sovereignty to the federal government. Lincoln didn't view the States as sovereign entities, therefore he figured all direction of a state's course was to come from Washington DC. He didn't give a damn about slaves ... he said so himself. What he DID care about was revenues, and protective tariffs that favored Yankee traders yet were onerous to Southern economy. But you go ahead on and kiss his ass, its a free (?) country.

[Bluntpoint]

Lincoln is dead, the war is over. There is no more south. There is no more north. We live in the U.S. North and south are just directions on a map.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Do you feel the same way about George Washington, Charles Lee, John Adams, et al? Or are they different because they actually won in their cause with help from another country?

The so-called CSA had slavery as its cornerstone. The United States did not and does not.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

You're right. My experience with anyone flying that rag is the same. It might be OK for burning or lining the septic tank, but thats about it.

Anyone who honestly examines the history of the so-called CSA will feel the same way.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

If I recall correctly, (and I'm sure if I don't someone will correct me) the debate about whether or not a state could secede began about the time the Constitution was ratified.

No.

The men who wrote the Constitution were very aware of the weakness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation. They knew that a central government, with a "coercive power" was needed.

Nullification and secession were inventions of later generations. Now, confederate apologists spread the same disinformation.

There is no right to unilateral state secession in U.S. law and there never was.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Was Ft Sumter part of the US when it was fired on by the confederates?

South Carolina renounced all title to Fort Sumter in 1841.

Walt

[Jael]

Bama bump

[Jael]

Gars? Never heard the term used except for fish.

[Jael]

Then they complain how Lincoln stripped their liberty away by not allowing them to strip the liberty away from the black man?

Did you attend public schools? You really believe that Lincoln was about the Black Man?

Do you have a problem with, and please excuse the phrasology, that I call a spade a spade, when pointing out that the dixiecrat party were nothing but white trash who wanted the right to lynch the black man?

That really isn't true, but I suspect that you already know that.

[Jael]

Amelia, you don't have to apologize for being white and Southern. :-)

[stand watie]

i can't recall anybody sending themself a message to move SOUTH! LOL!

free dixie NOW,sw

[stand watie]

you seem to have forgotten the Stainless Banner (2nd National/Jackson flag). and the 11 & 13 star versions of the FIRST NATIONAL!

also, i'd include the CHEROKEE,CHICKASAW, & CHOCTAW flags!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

you know, every time i hear this SILLY,SELF-RIGHTEOUS & NON-SENSICAL response, i wonder if the speaker/writer remembers the yankee states freed THEIR slaves a year AFTER Richmond fell?

slavery caused the WBTS in precisely the same way that fish cause floods.

propaganda is no less hatefilled/hateful & UNTRUE because it is endless repeated.

free dixie,sw

[Amelia]

I believe you are wrong, and that there were several threats to dissolve the Union between 1790-1830 which had nothing to do with slavery but I don't have time to search quotes today.

Perhaps we can argue it another time, when I have more time.

[stand watie]

NOPE! we wouldn't. it was re-taking southron soil, un-lawfully held by a foreign nation.

BUT, otoh, we should NOT have done so because like Fortress Monroe, the occupiers were in "jail" & FEEDING THEMSELVES!

GEN Bueauregard should have left them alone.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

EXACTLY!

and my governess would have TOO. that would have been 100 times WORSE!

free dixie,sw

[abishai]

Yes, the vile institution of slavery has left a dark stain on the Confederacy. No one should try to say otherwise. What the Chancellor was implying was that the Southern leaders should be maligned because they were traitors and violated their oaths. Was not Washington, Charles Lee, or Horatio Gates in violation of their sworn oaths to the Crown when they took up arms against the British? They were traitors to their government, yet Washington and Gates are esteemed as heroes for doing and accomplishing what they thought was right to do. If the Revolutionaries lost, would we as British colonists still think of them as highly as we do now?