Virginia Faces Boycott Over Confederacy Issue

Salim A. Khalfani was ushered into James S. Gilmore III’s office for the first time two years ago, when he and other NAACP leaders paid a courtesy call on Virginia’s new Republican governor at the state Capitol.

“That dialogue continued,” Khalfani recalled this week. “There wasn’t a major need for another meeting.”

Until now. Khalfani, who has since risen to be chief strategist for the state’s 30,000-member civil rights chapter, and Gilmore, midway through his term, are the two main antagonists in a tense debate over racial politics in Virginia that was prompted in part by Gilmore’s official designation of April as Confederate History Month.

That annual springtime proclamation, which Gilmore inherited from predecessor George Allen, also a Republican, and amended to include a condemnation of slavery, has prompted Khalfani to threaten a consumer boycott by African Americans that could cost Virginia tourism tens of millions of dollars, as similar sanctions have in South Carolina.

Next Wednesday, at another Capitol meeting already making both sides edgy, the two may hammer out an agreement defusing the issue just in time for the summer flood of tourists to Virginia’s many beaches, parks and historic attractions.

“There are other things we can do to highlight how we feel,” Khalfani said in an interview Thursday.

But Khalfani also said Gilmore must renounce last month’s proclamation and reverse his plan to sign it again next year. “I don’t see a middle ground when you’re trampling on our sensitivity.”

Without those two concessions, a boycott “would be inevitable,” Khalfani said.

Mark A. Miner, Gilmore’s press secretary, said: “The governor has had an open door since he took office. We’ve had a good, working relationship with the NAACP. We’re hopeful that will continue.”

Earlier this week, Gilmore spoke indirectly to Khalfani in an address to 300 tourism executives who were meeting here, reminding the NAACP of his longtime commitment to African Americans, through initiatives in education, tourism, technology and the creation this year of a new Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“We must meet each other halfway,” Gilmore said.

Since then, the two sides have heard from black leaders and others hopeful about a cooling-off period.

“You can’t solve everything in one meeting,” said Emmitt Carlton, of Alexandria, who attended that January 1998 meeting with Gilmore in his role as president of the NAACP’s Virginia state conference. “But this is a real opportunity. There are decent possibilities for resolution.”

L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor whom Gilmore consults frequently, told a Richmond television station that he had spoken with both sides in recent days. Gilmore has “done too many things and tried too hard” to reach out to African Americans to suffer a full-scale boycott in Virginia, Wilder told WWBT-TV.

A boycott could be devastating to Virginia’s $12.3-billion-a-year tourism economy, both sides agree.

In South Carolina, where the NAACP began economic sanctions Jan. 1 to protest the Confederate battle flag atop the statehouse in Columbia, estimates of their impact range from $20 million to $100 million, as international corporations and far smaller groups canceled their winter trips to resorts and historic sites in Hilton Head, Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

In Richmond earlier this week, national NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told reporters that he hoped the dispute “can be settled by Virginians in the way that Virginians think best.” Khalfani said any boycott would not happen immediately, because it would entail national approval.

State Sen. Benjamin J. Lambert III (D-Richmond), who holds Wilder’s old seat in the state Senate, said Gilmore’s proclamation was distasteful, but not as disheartening as continued racial strife--or the prospect of a boycott that could hurt Richmond and other struggling urban centers.

“We don’t need to start this century by starting the Civil War again,” said Lambert, 63. “Who gives a damn what happened 100 years ago? We don’t need all this crazy crap. We need to forget what their forefathers did to our forefathers. We should look ahead in a unified manner.”

Khalfani said his association has an enduring grievance.

“We’ve had a good relationship with this governor,” said Khalfani, 41. “But symbols like this let society and people know what this governor values. So, symbols have a very important role. People may fight even over something that may seem petty.”