Anti-Flag Trek Ends; Banner Yet Waves

With gaping holes in his sneakers, Joseph P. Riley Jr. trudged up the state Capitol steps Thursday, hoping for the removal of an icon of the Old South. But at the end of a five-day, 120-mile protest march, he looked up to see the Confederate flag still snapping in the wind.

The 57-year-old Charleston mayor set out to pressure state legislators to lower the Rebel flag, which has flown above the Capitol since 1962.

But he arrived to find a stalemate inside the Statehouse, a paralysis of will celebrated on the other side of the building by pro-flag die-hards waving Confederate banners and hollering Rebel yells.

Riley and 2,000 supporters who gathered here Thursday heard South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges and other political leaders pledge to force a vote on the matter soon. “We respectfully demand that our legislators--this year, this session, next week--move the battle flag of the Confederacy and get in step with the people of South Carolina,” Riley thundered on the Capitol’s southern steps as the crowd chanted, “Bring down the flag!”

But a contingent of 250 flag supporters from small towns as near as Columbia’s suburbs and as far as Alabama joined in a counterdemonstration to preserve one of the few unfettered symbols left of the Old South’s military legacy.

“The flag’s part of our heritage, and it’s staying up there if we got anything to do with it,” said Robert Clarkson, an organizer of the pro-flag rally. Nearby, a man wearing a Rebel flag sweatshirt played a chorus of “Dixie” on an air horn.

The South Carolina Senate is so torn over the issue that an attempt earlier this week to prod a compromise toward a full vote could not even survive the scrutiny of committee leaders. The flag issue will die in this session if neither wing of the state Legislature passes any bill to deal with it by May 1. That bitter prospect grows more likely by the day while senators flay at each other in barbed speeches that strain civility.

“If we’re going to fight in here like cats and dogs,” state Sen. Robert Ford, an African American Democrat and flag opponent, lamented earlier this week, “the public will reflect on that.” A moment later, flag supporter and Republican state Sen. Glenn F. McConnell, a devoted Civil War reenactor who runs a Confederate memorabilia shop in a Charleston suburb, rose to complain that he and his allies have been “vilified as racists, skinheads and Nazis.”

The most personal slights have been aimed at Riley, who has been called “LBJ,” for “Little Black Joe,” by flag supporters who shadowed him for the duration of his march from Charleston to Columbia. Pestered by die-hards who blared banjo renditions of “Dixie” from boom boxes, Riley watched his fellow marchers dwindle to as few as 50 as they power-walked through the winding back roads of state Route 176.

State troopers kept Riley and the rowdy flag supporters at a distance. There was ample reason, Riley explained when it was over. He read aloud from an anonymous threat he received just before setting out: “ ‘If you march those N-dash-dash-dashes through Calhoun County, I will put you in my gun sights.’ ” Riley added: “Is that heritage or is that hate?”

Despite the threats, Riley’s back-road odyssey was bolstered by a cross-section of South Carolina society by the time he approached Columbia. Bank presidents and ministers joined him for stints along the two-lane blacktop. University of South Carolina football coach Lou Holtz and his Clemson counterpart, Tommy Bowden, accompanied him during one stretch. Carolina’s home-grown rockers Hootie and the Blowfish joined up as he crossed the Congaree River into Columbia. When Riley reached the University of South Carolina campus, holding the state Palmetto flag aloft, scores of teachers and students streamed along, clapping and chanting: “Way to go, Joe!”

“This isn’t just one or two segments of society,” said Julian Buxton, who owns a Charleston tour firm and fears a 40% drop in his business if a boycott of South Carolina, led by the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, continues while the Rebel flag flies in Columbia. “You’ve got about every part of South Carolina here except the racists. That’s got to count for something.”

On the Capitol’s north steps, leaders of the pro-flag rally complained that their passion for keeping history alive is being tarnished by undeserved charges of racism.

“We’ve been accused of these attitudes, but I’ve never heard anyone say racist things at our meetings,” said Clarkson, who drove three hours from Anderson, S.C., a small town near the Georgia border, to help cobble the rally together.

He put his hand on his heart as supporters pledged their allegiance to the Confederate flag, vowing “affection, reverence and undying devotion to the cause for which it stands.” But Clarkson, who heads a group called Save the Flag, acknowledged that he also is a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization promoting Confederate heritage that has flourished in Southern states and is led by men with segregationist leanings.

McConnell, a leader of the pro-flag Senate faction, said that “false allegations” of racism have made it harder for flag supporters to consider compromise. “I don’t listen to the fringe groups. The folks I listen to are the historical groups, the reenactors, the people who want a way of remembering their dead ancestors.”

McConnell said he might agree to moving the flag from the Capitol dome if it could be flown at an “appropriate” site nearby, where “it could be seen and honored.” He has been ushering legislators into his office to inspect a clay mock-up of his proposal to fly the Confederate banner along with several other battle flags around a monument that now honors the state’s 20,000 Civil War dead. It is just a few hundred yards from the Capitol.

Black legislators scoff that McConnell has tied so many conditions to his compromise--from refusing to house the battle flag in a glass case to demanding the playing of “Dixie” at ceremonies at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina--that he knows opponents will never accede to them all.

“He’s loading it down with junk he knows will not pass,” said Democratic state Sen. Darrell Jackson, one of several legislators working on other compromise proposals.

In the final stretch of his march, Riley said he was encouraged by some of the talks going on between flag opponents and supporters in the Senate. But “we’ve gone through this before,” he conceded. Sighing, he pointed down the road at Confederate banners waved in the air by flag supporters. “There’s no heritage there. Just anger.”

Twenty miles down the road, just a few blocks from the Capitol, Riley glanced up and saw the battle flag flying over the dome. This time he said nothing, just walked on.