Large confederate flag flies near busy Florida highways

By KEITH MORELLI
Media General News Service
Published: June 3, 2008

EUREKA SPRINGS — In a gentle southern breeze, the Confederate battle flag that will be seen by hundreds of thousands of travelers each day was raised Tuesday morning.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans unfurled the 50-by-30-foot flag next to the Interstate 75 bridge over U.S. 92 at 7 a.m. to commemorate the 200th birthday of the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis.
More than a dozen people attended, many wearing Dixie Outfitters T-shirts proclaiming, “It’s a Southern Thing.“
J.D. Spivey wore a black leather vest adorned with Confederate symbols. He’s the founder of Hardcore Confederates, made up mostly of motorcycle riders. Spivey said this was a proud day.
For some, the flag is a symbol of racial hatred, and it was condemned this week by officials with the Florida NAACP after they learned from reporters it was going up.
Modern day Southern sympathizers don’t see it that way.
“I tell them to read history. That’s what I tell them,“ Spivey said. “I’m real proud of my ancestors and what they did. They stood up for what they believed in.“
The flag, which cost $800 and was made in China, is the centerpiece of a Civil War memorial park that will be dedicated April 26, Confederate Memorial Day. The lighted park will feature a granite marker.
The banner is one of five being erected as part of a project called Flags Across Florida by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. The organization, formed more than 100 years ago to memorialize the war lost by the South in 1865, owns the Tampa property.
“We have a couple of American flags in this country. This is one of them,” said Marion Lambert, a welder from Brandon and member of the group, as he watched site preparation work Monday.
When he sees the flag, Lambert thinks of the courage of soldiers who fought under it. They included three of his ancestors.
“This flag was a soldier’s flag,” he said. “It stands for American liberty.”
Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, sees something else.
“It is always a symbol of hate, where ever it is flown,” Nweze said. “It is a symbol of racial hatred against those of us who are black in this country and in this state.”
From her home in Miami, Nweze rejected the argument that the flag is a source of pride for descendants of Civil War soldiers.
“It’s not a symbol of hate or race to them,” she said. “It is for us, those of us impacted by it. It is offensive to us. They know what it means to us. They are part of the same story.”
Under a sweltering sun Monday, a half-dozen workers got the site ready for 16 tons of granite set in concrete.
“All the labor here is donated,” Lambert said. “That portable toilet — we are getting that for $5 for the duration.”
He hedged when asked how much the Confederate war memorial will cost but did say the flagpole alone, all 139 feet of it, not including the 14 feet piercing the sandy soil, cost about $18,000.
The Confederate battle flag is the best known of three flags that have come to symbolize the Confederacy, the one with two crossed bars containing rows of stars on a field of red.
Lambert said the park will include 30 bronze plaques set in granite telling Civil War stories. The flag, he said, “is the eye-catcher,” with the ultimate goal of drawing people to the memorial for a history lesson with a Southern slant.
A fundraising effort for the Hillsborough County site began two years ago.
The Confederate flag was removed from the official flag of Hillsborough County almost three decades ago.
One of the flag’s neighbors, Randy Holman of Accent Marine, said he’s of two minds about the memorial.
“To me, it’s just a big piece of cloth flying in the air,” Holman said. “I know that to some people, it means more than that. I worry about my customers and if they object to it and if they will they think it’s my flag.”
He also worries about protests and vandalism . “I hope they just leave my business alone.”
The property was turned over to the group four years ago by a sympathetic landowner, according to a fundraising letter written in 2006 and posted on the Web site of Florida’s Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The campaign was fueled by the Hillsborough County Commission’s refusal to recognize Confederate Memorial Day last year, said Wesley Chapel lawyer David McCallister, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
McCallister said all the proper approvals have been obtained for what the fund-raising letter calls “a lighted public park.”
“It’s not like we’re trying to secede or anything,” McCallister said. “We just want to recognize that these soldiers died and they’re not going to be forgotten by their descendants.”
Even the Federal Aviation Administration has given its approval for the towering flagpole, according to Florida’s Sons of Confederate Veterans, a nonprofit corporation made up of 53 chapters with more than 1,500 members.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White first heard about the Confederate flag Monday.
“I realize that everybody’s heritage needs to be respected and displayed in their own way,” White said, “but this is not the way to bring the community together in a healing process. It’s still an open wound.
“Here we are,” White said, “still fighting this 28 or 30 years later.”