FLAG FUROR.

• Author: STROUD, JOSEPH S.

THE CONFEDERATE COLORS FLYING ATOP THE SOUTH CAROLINA CAPITOL REIGNITE OLD RACIAL TENSIONS

Three flags adorn the top of the flagpole outside A.C. Flora High School in Columbia, South Carolina: the United States Stars and Stripes, the Palmetto tree and crescent moon of the South Carolina state flag, and the red, white, and blue of the Flora Falcons' school banner.

Just a few miles away, at the South Carolina Statehouse, another red, white, and blue banner flies alongside the state and national flags. But that six-foot standard, the Confederate battle flag carried by Southern troops during the Civil War, doesn't inspire quite the same loyalty among Flora's students.

"I don't think it's right that black people should accept the Confederate flag as their flag, because it really wasn't," says Rasheed Jones, 17, a senior who is African-American. "When it comes down to it, the Confederate flag represented white people. I say, put it in a museum."

But Matt La Schuma, 18, who drives to Flora each day in a car adorned by a Confederate flag vanity plate, thinks the flag should remain atop the Statehouse in honor of the soldiers who died fighting for the Confederacy. "Their memory's getting stomped on," Matt says.

And he plans to keep his Confederate license plate, no matter what fellow students think. "It can go down (from the Statehouse), but it's going to stay on my car," he says defiantly.

REOPENING OLD WOUNDS

The students' diverging views mirror a debate raging throughout South Carolina, the only state left in the South where the Confederate flag is flown on the capitol. South Carolina's governor, major business groups, and African-American organizations want the flag removed, but the state legislature, which controls the flagpole, has refused to do so. The dispute has become a national spectacle and a staple of the presidential election campaign. For the state's teenagers, many of whom thought issues of race had been settled in the last century, the debate has been a stark reminder of how far race relations have yet to go.

A DEBATE OVER HISTORY

The fight over the flag is the latest episode in a long history of tension and discord between white and black citizens in South Carolina. The flag has flown over the Statehouse dome since 1962, when it was hoisted during a Civil War centennial celebration. But that year was also a time of renewed racism, as many whites reacted angrily to court-ordered school desegregation.

Still, integration was...