Scott Goss | The News Journal

Damian Giletto/The News Journal

At least two Delaware State Fair vendors selling Confederate flags and items adorned with the divisive symbol were ordered Monday to remove those products from their inventory.

"We adopted a policy two years ago that bars our vendors from selling anything that can be found offensive," fair spokesman Danny Aguilar said. "The Confederate flag is specifically listed as an example."

Despite that policy, handkerchiefs, T-shirts, hats, belt buckles and blankets bearing the Confederate flag were being sold at vendor booths just inside the fair's main entrance and along the Midway.

Suchat Pederson, The News Journal

Officials took action only after The News Journal asked about the fair's policy. A few Confederate flag items were still being sold by some vendors hours after Aguilar said the items would be removed.

"We don't go through every vendor's inventory but if it's hanging in the front of a stand, we should identify that and ask for it to be removed," Aguilar said. "Our staff is sweeping through them now and it takes a little while to do that."

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Members of two local NAACP chapters expressed frustration that the vendors were able to sell the items for several days without interference.

"I started getting complaints on Friday just as soon as the fair opened," said Lamar Gunn, the Republican head of the Central Delaware NAACP.

"You have all types of elected officials there and many had to be aware of it yet no one stood up," he said. "Why isn't the fair policing its vendors? If someone was selling pornography could they get away with it for three days?"

Suchat Pederson, The News Journal

Although not widely publicized, the Delaware State Fair implemented its policy around the same time other state fairs began barring the Confederate flag from their grounds.

Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and New York each adopted similar rules in the weeks and months after a white supremacist murdered nine African Americans in a South Carolina church in 2015. Several cited public safety concerns created by symbols widely considered hateful or derogatory.

Their appearance at the Delaware State Fair marks the latest flare up in a long-standing and widespread fight over the controversial battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Many say it glorifies racism and slavery while defenders argue it is a nod to history and heritage, regardless of its post-Civil War adoption by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.

The flag and other Confederate symbols — most of which came to prominence after the Civil War — have become a cultural flash point in recent years, both nationally and in Delaware.

Last year, the Lower Sussex County branch of the NAACP called on state lawmakers to stop providing taxpayer funding to the Georgetown Historical Society until it removes a decade-old Confederate monument from its museum.

Despite Gov. John Carney's support for withholding those funds, the Delaware General Assembly last month earmarked nearly $14,500 in tax dollars for the private organization that also organizes the biennial Return Day festivities.

Jason Minto, The News Journal

James Bowden, the historical society's president and the great-grandson of a Union solider, said Monday that state funding provided to the organization is used to pay its utility bills and not on the granite monument that bears the names of more than 95 Delawareans who supported the Confederate war effort.

He also defended the nine-foot obelisk by quoting a former President Barrack Obama spokesman who said in 2015 that Confederate flags like the one that flew over the South Carolina statehouse belong in a museum. That flag was later removed.

He described the monument and the sale of the Confederate flag at the Delaware State Fair as "apples and oranges."

"We're in the business of interpreting history and it's a historical fact that Delawareans fought for the south," Bowden said. "But the monument is not meant to promote what the Confederacy stood for."

Louise Henry, president of the Lower Sussex NAACP, said that monument display — and sale of the Confederate flag at the Delaware State Fair — is hurtful to thousands of the state's black residents.

Submitted to The News Journal

"I know everyone wants to be proud of their family but there are two sides to this story and the fact is that for 200 years African Americans were beaten, raped, killed and sold as slaves under the same system that flag symbolizes," she said. "I don't understand why people are so proud of that or why they think we're just going to swallow it up."

State Sen. Harris McDowell, D-Wilmington, said he thinks the General Assembly should consider withholding the nearly $122,000 a year in state taxpayer funds that are allocated to the Delaware State Fair if organizers continue to allow Confederate flags to be sold there.

He and fellow Joint Finance Committee co-chair Rep. Melanie George Smith, D-Bear, sent a letter to the Delaware State Fair's board of directors on Monday requesting that vendors who do not stop selling those items be barred from returning in the future.

"We believe that continuing to allow the sale of these flags would run directly counter to Delaware’s highest, most valued ideals of inclusiveness and tolerance," they wrote. "While the first amendment protects the rights of individuals to sell anything from pornography to hate symbols, it certainly does not grant them a right to sell these items at the State Fair with the blessing of Grant-in-Aid funding."

Contact reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.