Amazon, eBay join other retailers to pull Confederate flag

Gregg Zoroya and Hadley Malcolm | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Walmart, Sears to stop selling Confederate Flag products In wake of the shooting deaths of nine people inside a historic South Carolina church, some major department stores announced they would stop carrying the controversial Confederate Flag. Buzz60's Leigh Scheps (@LeighTVReporter) reports.

Corrections and clarifications: A previous version of this story misidentified when Sears said it would remove Confederate flag merchandise. It was Monday.

Momentum to eradicate public displays of the Confederate flag continued to build Tuesday as more retailers and online marketplaces, including Amazon and eBay, joined Walmart to remove rebel-flagged items from their shelves and websites.

After Walmart and its 11,000 stores led the way Monday night by sweeping from shelves any product bearing the Confederate battle flag, retail giants Sears, Amazon and eBay followed suit.

"We believe it has become a contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism," said eBay spokesperson Johnna Hoff.

"We never want to offend anyone with the products we offer," Walmart said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for Amazon confirmed that the company is pulling down Confederate flag merchandise.

Etsy.com, the peer-to-peer online marketplace of independent sellers, also said Tuesday it would bar items emblazoned with the Confederate flag.

"Etsy's policies prohibit items or listings that promote, support or glorify hatred and these items fall squarely into that category," spokeswoman Sara Cohen said.

Southern state governments found themselves mired in the same controversy.

On Tuesday, protesters rallied at South Carolina's statehouse to ask legislators to make good on South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's vow to remove the Confederate battle flag from its place of honor on the Statehouse grounds, where it has stood since legislators removed it in 2000 from atop the Capitol dome.

The South Carolina House and Senate passed resolutions Tuesday to allow debate on the issue.

In Mississippi, citizens started a petition to erase the stars-and-bars image from its emblematic position on the state flag of Mississippi.

In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe vowed to pull it as choice of emblem on vehicle license plates — a step allowable since a recent Supreme Court ruling found that it was not protected speech.

"It's display on state-issued license tags is, in my view, unnecessarily divisive and hurtful to too many of our people," McAuliffe said.

And Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said Tuesday he also wants the flag removed from license plates, and the bust of Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forest pulled out of the Tennessee statehouse.

The stampede against an historical icon long considered by detractors a symbol of slavery and racism began last week with pastors and activists imploring marketer to shun the image and politicians to take down the flag following the shooting Wednesday of nine people attending a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

Police charged 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who allegedly published a manifesto against African Americans, Jews and Hispanics. A photo on his website showed him casually resting a small Confederate flag onto his shoulder while staring at the camera over the rims of his sunglasses.

Actual flag makers say there isn't much of a market anyway for the Confederate version in the U.S.

"It's not something regularly produced," says Reggie Vandenbosch, chairman of the Flag Manufacturers Association of America. "It's not even a tenth of a percent of the overall business."

He says there are roughly 150 million U.S. flags made every year by American manufacturers. Association members plan to get together to discuss continuing to manufacture the Confederate flag, he says, but in the meantime, Valley Forge Flag, where Vandenbosch is vice president of sales, plans to stop selling it.

"There's been a seachange moment out there and the issue has really come to light," he says. "We're just simply not going to participate in production or selling of these out of sensitivity and not wanting to create anybody any additional emotional pain."