As retail giants Walmart, Amazon and eBay pull all merchandise carrying the Confederate flag this week in response to Wednesday's shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, the owner of Portland's oldest and largest flag store faced a dilemma.



"If we were a regular retail store that sells all kinds of things, it would have been pulled days ago," said owner Dave Anchel of Elmer's Flag and Banner early Tuesday afternoon. "Actually, I probably would have pulled it years ago, when we bought this store."



When Anchel bought the store in 2011, he was appalled to see it sold the Confederate flag.



"We sell that?" he remembers thinking. "Why do we sell that? That flies in the face of everything I stand for. Get it out of here."



But slowly, Anchel came to understand that the store, which carries flags of every country in the world - as well as those from the War of 1812 and the American Revolution - was a historical archive of sorts.



"When you have a flag store you're going to carry things you don't like," he said. "Because if you didn't, you wouldn't be true to the completeness of the collection. If you go to any flag store anywhere in the country, it's the same dilemma."



Those who buy the Confederate flags from his shop tend to be Civil War reenactors, movie production companies and students working on reports, he said.



Anchel said he hopes his store hasn't enabled bigots or racists to promote their views; he raised prices on his Confederate flags a few years ago to discourage sales.



"We are nowhere near competitive," he said. "And that's for a good reason. I'm perfectly happy to have lousy sales of the Confederate flag. .... I think we reorder American flags several times a month, and we reorder the Confederate flag maybe once every other year. It's just not something we sell a lot of. And that includes online and in our store."



But later Tuesday afternoon, Anchel removed the Confederate flags from his online store. And after receiving input from his staff, he decided to change the way he sells the flag in the store, as well.



First, he's removing Confederate flags from the shelves. Where they once sat, he'll post a sign telling customers the flags are available behind the counter, and that Elmer's will donate 100 percent of proceeds from sales of the flags to organizations that fight racism and bigotry, like the Southern Poverty Law Center or the NAACP.

(Because his Confederate flag sales are so terrible, Anchel's also considering making a separate donation to the organizations, he said.)



"If someone's buying it because they're bigoted, but all the money's going to something they detest, they're not going to buy it," Anchel said. "Either way, I'm not just going to leave it there."



He does, however, want to make the flag available to those who want it for historical reenactment or educational purposes.



He still feels an obligation to offer a complete selection of historical flags, he said. He likened the Confederate flag to banned books.



"What if you had a book store and you pull Huckleberry Finn because it uses the N-word?" he asked. "Pull this and pull that. Where would you draw the line? It's kind of hard to say. What do you do?"



The Confederate flags aren't the only flags in Anchel's store to receive negative attention. Some Muslim customers who enter his store often turn around all the Israeli flags, he said. And some in favor of freeing Tibet are offended that he sells the Chinese flag.



"Flags are very emotional for people," he said. "And I wanted it to be able to serve the whole community."



Now, Anchel has decided that serving the community means changing the way he sells the Confederate flags. His store's Confederate flags have traditionally been housed in the historical section of the store. In light of last week's shooting in South Carolina and mounting racial tensions surrounding the flags, they don't seem so historical, he said.



"When I saw [the Charleston shootings] on the news, I was really, really moved," he said. "My wife and I looked at each other and said this is different. We thought it was a tipping point."



-- Anna Marum

amarum@oregonian.com

503-294-5911

@annamarum