ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 12, 1997 TAG: 9704140040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: WARREN FISKE, DAN CASEY AND LESLIE TAYLOR THE ROANOKE TIMES
The state NAACP director called the proclamation "deceptive, fascist and racist."
Responding to an angry denouncement from civil rights groups, Gov. George Allen said Friday that he didn't mean to offend anyone for proclaiming April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.
Meanwhile, descendants of Confederate soldiers defended the proclamation, and said critics should bone up on their history.
"I surely didn't want to upset anyone or create divisiveness and I would apologize to anyone who somehow gets that feeling," Allen said during a new conference.
On Thursday, state NAACP director Linda Byrd-Harden denounced the proclamation - which recognized "the honorable sacrifices of [Virginia's] Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens to the cause of liberty" - as "deceptive, fascist and racist" and called on Allen to resign. She was joined by leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Allen suggested that part of Harden's motivation was to cause Republicans political embarrassment during a statewide election year. He noted that he had signed an identical proclamation in the proceeding years and had encountered no criticism.
"I don't know how much of the upset was political, but to those that might be sincerely upset by this, that was clearly not my intent," Allen said.
Harden could not be reached Friday for comment.
Allen said he gets more than 500 requests a year to issue proclamations and signed many during his term honoring black heritage and achievements.
"What we need to do is celebrate the diversity of our heritage," he said. "There is not a state in the union with a richer history."
The governor said he realizes many blacks associate the Confederacy with slavery and are offended by celebrations of it. But Allen said he does not believe that was the motivation of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the group that submitted the proclamation to his office.
Allen said he would "condemn" anyone "who would use the Confederacy, or the Confederate flag, the Confederate Monument or the cause to portray bigotry, hatred and divisiveness."
"That was clearly not the purpose of those requesting this proclamation," he said.
Allen, however, stopped short of saying he made a mistake in signing the proclamation. "It was a legitimate request," he said.
To Virginia members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Allen has nothing to apologize for. Critics of the proclamation are showing their ignorance of history, say members of the SCV. They also consider President Abraham Lincoln a historical villain and say the term "Civil War" is inaccurate.
Instead, Confederate History and Heritage month is about their ancestors - most of whom never owned slaves - who defended their homes and families against an invading Union Army, SCV leaders say.
"We're talking about my ancestors, my great-grandfather," said Robert "Red" Barbour, of Fincastle, president of the Roanoke SCV chapter. "Do I not have a right to my heritage and my history? I do not deny [the NAACP and the SCLC] their black history."
At least tenuously, the proclamation has some Roanoke roots. The 2,500-member state SCV chapter first voted to request that Allen sign it in a 1995 state convention that was held at the Patrick Henry Hotel on Jefferson Street.
Allen, meanwhile, isn't the first Virginia governor to sign a proclamation memorializing those who fought in the Civil War.
Former Gov. Douglas Wilder, the only black ever elected governor of any state, signed a related although quite different proclamation during his first few months as governor in 1990.
In response to a request from the Virginia Living History Center in Fredericksburg, Wilder declared April 7-15, 1990, the "Final Chapter of the Civil War Days" in Virginia.
That proclamation recalled "those who sacrificed in this great struggle" and praised Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army. But it also memorialized President Abraham Lincoln and Union Army Commander Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
"Lincoln was a tyrant, and he wanted to force his views and those of a radical few conspirators on the southern people," Barbour said.
The controversy is rooted in a very difficult period for many people but one that "is still very much a part of who we are," said Mark Miller, a Roanoke College history professor.
"It really deals with issues of identity and world view and ethnicity," Charles Reagan Wilson, a historian at the University of Mississippi, told the New York Times in February. "Are we one people or two?"
Many white Southerners base their identity on ancestry, Wilson said, "and to cut that tie with the symbols, with the genealogy, is for them a kind of cultural death."
But how that history is preserved and celebrated is where the controversy begins, Miller said. The issue becomes one of private decision and public position, he said.
If a Confederate museum wanted to exhibit flags in the museum basement, "that's appropriate," Miller said. "I'd always defend that. But if the state decided to fly the Confederate flag over the State Capitol, that raises another issue. You simply force this kind of discussion."
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