Protest March Against Confederate Flag in S.Carolina

Monday April 3 1:28 AM ET

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - About 600 people wearing
suits or T-shirts plastered with ``Take it Down''
bumper stickers set off Sunday on a 120-mile protest
march to the state capitol in Columbia to urge
legislators to remove a Confederate flag, which they
say is a racist symbol, from atop the Statehouse.

``What adorns the top of a state capitol could only be
and should only be the banners and flags that
represent every citizen of that state,'' said Mayor
Joseph P. Riley Jr. organizer of the five-day ``Get in
Step'' protest march scheduled to end Friday.

State Sen. McKinley Washington called the march ``a
pilgrimage to the state capitol of South Carolina,
just as the children of Israel walked to the sea.''

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The black and white crowd included local politicians
as well as S.C. Congressman James Clyburn, head of the
Congressional Black Caucus, author Edward Ball, whose
history of his plantation-owning ancestors, ``Slaves
in the Family,'' won a National Book Award, and S.C.
NAACP president the Rev. James Gallman.

The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People this year called for a tourism boycott
of South Carolina to protest against the red and blue
cross-barred flag, a banner of Southern heritage,
flying over the Statehouse.

The legislature raised the flag in 1962 to commemorate
the centennial of the Civil War, whose first shots
were fired here. Flag protesters say it was flown to
protest civil rights.

Polls show most South Carolinians want the flag moved
from the top of the Statehouse.

The NAACP boycott is expected to extend to sports and
entertainment, even recruiting of athletes to state
schools. But the tourism sanctions, which have cost
the state millions of dollars in lost conventions and
hotel bookings are ``working well enough,'' Gallman
said.

``Some understand dollars more than they understand
anything else,'' he said ``We're not going to give our
money and be treated as second-class citizens.'

``Why shouldn't we (march)?'' asked retired teacher
and newspaperman Clyde Johnson. ``To me, that flag on
top of that house is the equivalent of the Republican
swastika.''

``It's long overdue,'' said longshoreman Charles Goss,
who marched with a dozen union members under the
banner of the International Longshoremen's Association
Local 1422.

``That flag was ripped away from my
great-grandfather's hands in this century and used by
hate groups, who started waving it,'' Riley said.
``They waved it to protest integration.''

``Next year, the boycott is gonna lose a lot of its
sting. If we don't take it down this year, it'll be
there for another 1,000 years.'' State Sen. Robert
Ford of Charleston said.

Legislators who voted to put the flag up almost 40
years ago now say they want it down. But compromise,
figuring out where to put the flag when it does come
off the pole, has been hard to reach.

-
Copyright © 2000 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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