Confederate flags still fly on Alabama Capitol grounds

Fourteen black legislators advanced on the State Capitol on Feb. 2, 1988.

A wire fence stood in front of them. Nearby, two groups gathered. One, according to the Los Angeles Times, was predominantly black and sang "We Shall Overcome." The other, predominantly white, sang "Dixie."

The legislators tried to climb the fence, put in for renovations of the Capitol. Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, one of the officials in the group, said Monday their goal was to haul down the Confederate flag that flew over the State Capitol.

"You had the same argument they put in South Carolina, that this is part of their heritage," Holmes said in a phone interview. "And I told them it was part of your heritage that your forefathers fought under the Confederate flag trying to keep my forefathers in slavery."

State Capitol police met the legislators as they scaled the fence and arrested all 14. Loaded on buses that had been waiting, the legislators were charged with criminal trespass.

'The ugly history of America'

Although the Confederate flag no longer flies over the Alabama State Capitol, it remains on the grounds with other memorials to the Confederacy. Since 1994, four flags used by the Confederacy have flown at the Alabama Confederate Memorial, an 88-foot sculpture dedicated in 1898.

The flag continues to stir strong emotions. Gary Carlyle, the commander of the Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Monday slavery was "a terrible part of life in those days, and we must recognize that." But he said he did not see the flag as a symbol of racism.

"I see a people who were invaded," he said. "I see a people who defended their homes and firesides just like they did in 1776. I see a people who were . . . the most diverse army that America had ever known."

Holmes, however, called the flag "part of the ugly history of America."

"It represented slavery (and) it represented a defunct sovereign, a nation that had attempted to overthrow the United States government," he said.

Controversy over the flag returned to the forefront last week after nine people, all black, were killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopalian Church Wednesday evening. The white man accused of shooting the victims was seen wearing or posing with white supremacist symbols, including the Confederate flag.

Story continues below

Like Alabama, South Carolina flies the Confederate flag at a Confederate soldiers' memorial. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the flag in a press conference Monday afternoon.

Jennifer Ardis, a spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley, said Monday the governor's office had no comment on the flags.

Former Gov. John Patterson ordered the first national Confederate flag, known as the Stars and Bars, to fly over the Alabama State Capitol in 1961, as part of the Civil War centennial. Montgomery served as the capital of the Confederacy from February to May 1861.

On April 25, 1963, Gov. George Wallace ordered the Confederate battle flag raised over the capitol as U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy traveled to the state to discuss Wallace's resistance to integration of the University of Alabama campus.

Both supporters and opponents of civil rights viewed the flag as a symbol of state officials' defiance over the issue.

Black legislators long tried to have the flag removed due to the racist foundations of the Confederacy. Resolutions to bring it down went nowhere in the 1970s and 80s. Holmes and other lawmakers eventually sued the state to have the flag removed, citing an 1895 law that prevented any flag but the U.S. and state flags on the dome.

A court ruled for the plaintiffs in Jan. 1993. By that time, renovations had led to the removal of all three flags. In April of that year, Gov. Jim Folsom Jr. ordered the Confederate flag removed from the building once renovations were complete.

"It was just time to put it behind us," Folsom, a Democrat, said in a phone interview Monday. "The controversy was overshadowing a lot of good things we were doing in economic development. It wasn't a politic thing to do, because a lot of people were very emotional about it, and they voiced that to me."

A few months after the flag came down, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would open a plant in Vance, near Tuscaloosa, bringing the automotive industry to Alabama overnight. At the groundbreaking for the plant in May 1994, Mercedes-Benz executives told Folsom that it would have been difficult for them to come to Alabama if the Confederate flag still flew over the Capitol.

"If I had not taken the battle flag down from the top of the Capitol dome, I really don't think we would have been successful in that endeavor," Folsom said.

Raising the flag

Folsom had the flags moved over the Confederate Memorial in 1994, the first time flags flew there. The former governor said Monday there was "no strong reason" to put them there.

"We all decided the appropriate spot for it was a Confederate memorial," he said.

The flags at the memorial were meant as an educational exhibit, said Bob Bradley, the key curator of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

"The four flags were done in such a way as to be an interpretative exhibit," he said. "The fourth pole has the battle flag, the Army of Northern Virginia battle flag. The idea was to rotate numerous different types of battle flags (on the pole)."

Folsom said he thought the monument "puts the flags in the appropriate historical context."

"It is part of our history, but I consider that much different than flying over the Capitol dome," he said. "It is a historical statement."

Holmes said the flags at the memorial would be "an issue we'll have to revisit."

"Nothing should be around the Capitol but state flags and the United States flag," he said.