Confederate flag to fly a day at state park; NAACP irate

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A Confederate flag is rising again in Missouri, and an NAACP leader is vowing a "drastic" response.

Republican Gov. Matt Blunt has ordered the Confederate battle flag to fly Sunday at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville, where an afternoon graveside service is planned to mark Confederate Memorial Day.

The flag will fly for only one day, but a Blunt spokesman said Friday the governor also supports a scholarly review of whether it would be appropriate to again fly the flag regularly at the historic site.

Mary Ratliff, president of the Missouri State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was irate when she learned Friday of Blunt's decision.

"It is just appalling to me that the governor would again raise a flag that is so humiliating and reminds us of the vestige of slavery that has divided our nation for all these years," Ratliff said.

The state NAACP has a regularly scheduled meeting today in Columbia, and Ratliff said she would be "asking for drastic measures from our national office." She noted the NAACP has led a 5-year-old boycott of South Carolina because of its display of the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds, although not everyone is following the group's lead.

The flag has been a hot issue in Missouri for several years.

Confederate flags had flown daily at the Higginsville site and the Fort Davidson State Historic Site in Pilot Knob until they were ordered down in January 2003 by Democratic governor Bob Holden's administration.

That decision came shortly after a comment by then-representative Dick Gephardt of St. Louis -- who was running for the Democratic nomination for president at the time -- that the flag should no longer fly "anytime, anywhere" because it is a divisive symbol.

Candidate's 'whim'

Blunt disagreed with that decision, not necessarily because he wants the flags to fly permanently, but because he viewed it as coming "at the whim of a presidential candidate," spokesman Spence Jackson said Friday.

"The governor has a long-standing view that the State Parks Advisory Board should make decisions after discussing with scholars about the appropriate display of the flag," Jackson said, "with distance from any effort to politicize or obstruct the honoring of war dead."

Blunt supported legislation, which failed to come to a vote this year in the House, that would have allowed the state park board to decide whether Confederate flags should fly over Missouri's historical gravesites. The bill was strongly opposed by many black lawmakers.

Jackson said Blunt directed the flag to fly Sunday at the request of Rep. Mike McGhee, R-Odessa, whose district includes the historical site. McGhee said he was acting upon the request of several Higginsville residents.

"Those soldiers died for that flag. That's the one day honoring those soldiers and it should fly for that day," McGhee said. But "I don't think that flag belongs anywhere except over the graves of those soldiers."

Missouri never joined the Confederacy, but was a divided state during the Civil War, with some residents fighting for the Union and some for the Confederacy.

On the Net

Confederate Historic Site: www.mostateparks.com/confedmem.htm