In Oklahoma, protesters greet Obama with Confederate flags

OKLAHOMA CITY — Confederate battle flags greeted President Barack Obama as he arrived here for an overnight stay on Wednesday.

Across the street from his hotel in downtown Oklahoma City, as many as 10 people waved the flags as his motorcade arrived. The group stood among a larger group of demonstrators, many of them there to support the president, who is in town ahead of a visit to a federal prison on Thursday as part of his weeklong push on criminal justice issues.


According to local news organizations, a man named Andrew Duncomb, who calls himself the “black rebel,” organized the Confederate flag demonstration. He also put together a similar protest on Saturday at the Oklahoma State Capitol — just a day after South Carolina removed its contested flag from the State Capitol grounds. His Facebook page features photos from that rally.

Wearing a T-shirt bearing Obama’s picture, Sequoya Turner stayed at the demonstration site at the convention center across from Obama’s hotel 45 minutes after the flag-bearers had left, trying to compensate for the flag display.

“He should’ve had a better welcome than he had,” Turner said, breaking into tears. She said she grew up all over Oklahoma and has lived in its capital for seven years, and said Confederate flags are not a common sight, “maybe every blue moon.”

Aside from one exchange of words between a passerby and the flag-wavers, the mixed-race crowd was relatively peaceful and its members tried to ignore one another, she said.