Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410050052
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: DANVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Blacks are demanding that City Council reverse its decision to fly the flag on the grounds of a city-owned museum, said the Rev. William Avon Keen, local president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
``They are placating the racist community,'' Keen said. ``Our position has always been that the Confederate flag is a treasonous flag and a hate symbol that has been adopted by white-supremacy groups.''
Keen says blacks may commit acts of civil disobedience at the museum and sue the city over the decision. But other blacks say Keen and his supporters are crusading for a lost cause.
The council voted last month to allow the Heritage Preservation Association to build on the museum lawn a Confederate monument that would be topped with a Confederate flag.
The 7-2 vote in the tobacco-industry town split along racial lines; the council's black members dissented.
Joyce Glaise, a black councilwoman, and Louis Cobbs, vice president of the Danville branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, want the controversy behind them so they can concentrate on economic and social problems.
Cobbs said the flag reminds blacks their ancestors were slaves.
``The flag now represents the attitude of many people that blacks are inferior. You see it in the way these young whites use the flag on the back of their trucks and hurl insults at blacks as they drive by,'' he said.
But Cobbs said the answer for blacks, who constitute 30 percent of Danville's population, is to live with council's decision and ``remember it when we go to the polls.''
The issue surfaced in the Senate race when Republican Oliver North visited two weeks ago and said he supported public display of the flag.
Sen. Charles Robb, the Democratic incumbent, accused North of trying to divide voters and ``reopen old wounds'' by appealing to intolerance. North then accused Robb of using the Confederate flag issue to appeal to supporters of Douglas Wilder, the black former governor and Robb's political rival, who had withdrawn abruptly from the Senate race a week earlier.
Wayne Byrd, president of the Danville branch of the Heritage Preservation Association, said the lingering controversy perplexes him because he considers the fight finished.
His organization is collecting donations to pay for the $10,000 monument and plans to erect it in late November or early December. The Confederacy's third and final national flag is to be mounted atop the 7-foot obelisk.
``Some of these people offended by the flag are a small minority. I think they are going to be that way until they find that the majority of the people have the say in this country, and that's what democracy is about.''
The Confederate flag was removed last year from a pole in front of the Museum of Fine Arts and History after some residents complained it was a symbol of racism.
by CNB