SOUTH CAROLINA: Restaurant Owner Unable to Move Confederate Flag Above His Business
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — The place of Confederate flags in modern America has always been an issue, but debate intensified following the 2015 massacre of nine black South Carolinian churchgoers by a murderer who proudly toted the Stars and Bars. Many called out the offensiveness of the symbol, and then-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had the flag removed from the statehouse that year. “I think the more important part is it should have never been there,” she said. “These grounds are a place that everybody should feel a part of. What I realized now more than ever is people were driving by and felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain.”
Not all South Carolinians agreed, and the flag’s defenders slapped it on everything they could even as others protested the racist, slavery-conjuring symbol. As it does outside of homes and businesses throughout the South, a Confederate flag currently flies high in front of the Edisto River Kitchen & Creamery in Orangeburg, South Carolina. The ice cream shop has drawn protesters for its place beneath the offensive symbol, but the owner, Tommy Damas, won’t take it down. That’s because he can’t.
Related: How the fight over Confederate monuments is influencing Southern politics
The small piece of land in which the flagpole is planted in front of the Edisto River Kitchen & Creamery does not belong to Damas, but to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the group has said it will have Damas arrested for trespassing if he were to attempt to remove the flag that waves above his restaurant. “That flag needs to be moved and if there’s any possible way that I can do it, it’s going to be done,” Daras recently told Fox 8. “Right now, we’re gridlocked.”
The gridlock was created by the property’s previous owner, Maurice Bessinger, who ran a barbecue joint out of what is now Damas’s ice cream shop. In addition to being a restaurateur, Bessinger was an avid collector of Confederate memorabilia, which he used to decorate his restaurants. Before he died in 2014, Bessinger ensured the Confederate flag would continue to fly high outside of 1586 John C Calhoun Drive by selling the small piece of land—three thousandths of an acre—to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He gave it to the group for five dollars.
Daras and his wife bought the property a year after Bessinger’s death, but the Sons of Confederate Veterans have refused to relinquish the area surrounding the flagpole. “He put it in the hands of people that he trusted because he loved his Confederate ancestors and his Confederate history just like we do. So, there was nothing sinister,” Buzz Braxton, commander of the group’s eighth brigade, told Fox 8.
Damas and his employees have been harassed because of their proximity to the flag, and he’s now hired a lawyer to see what can be done about escaping the shadow of the symbol. The attorney argued that because the land is zoned for commercial use, the flag should be removed, but the city rejected the claim. An appeal is planned but it doesn’t look good for Damas. The Sons of Confederate Veterans have said that the flag will continue to fly “as long as they’re alive.”
–newsweek.com
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