Battle-Flag Battle.

• Author: Loury, Glenn C.
• Position: Confederate flag controversy - Brief Article

Should the Confederate flag on South Carolina's capitol come down?

YES

In 1961, the Confederate battle flag was raised over the South Carolina capitol for the first time in the modern era. With the national government just beginning to enforce the Supreme Court's school desegregation rulings across the South, politicians in the state wanted to symbolize their intention to resist what they saw as illegitimate federal authority.

Fortunately, the right to equal protection guaranteed by the 14th Amendment won out over the purported right of states to practice segregation. There is no question that the right side prevailed in that struggle of the early 1960s, just as the right side had prevailed 100 years before.

And yet, the Confederate flag is still flying atop the Statehouse in Columbia. Now the NAACP has organized a boycott of tourism in the state, and the state legislature refuses to remove the flag.

Although my African-American forefathers were persecuted under the battle flag of the Confederacy, I take no offense when I see it in the back window of a pickup truck, or sewn on a denim jacket, or draped across a dormitory window.

But as a U.S. citizen, I am disgusted by the spectacle of civil authorities in South Carolina officially and publicly embracing a symbol of illegal rebellion against legitimate national authority.

--GLENN C. LOURY Director, Institute of Race and Social Division Boston University Times Op-Ed page

NO

The Confederate battle flag atop the state capitol in Columbia, South Carolina, is not an attack upon anyone. It is simply a permanent memorial to the roughly 21,000 South Carolinians who died defending the state during the War Between the States.

Many of...