SOUTH CAROLINA: Sheriff Won’t Lower Flag for Nelson Mandela
PICKENS, S.C. — Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark says he won’t lower the flag outside the sheriff’s office to half-staff to honor Nelson Mandela because the South African civil rights leader was not a United States citizen.
Giant photographs of former South African President Nelson Mandela are displayed at the Nelson Mandela Legacy Exhibition at the Civic Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. (AP Photo/File)
Clark made the announcement Friday on his Facebook page, writing “Nelson Mandela did great things for his country and was a brave man but he was not an AMERICAN!!!”
Clark said the sheriff’s office American flag was at half-staff Friday to honor a Florence County deputy killed in a wreck and Saturday for Pearl Harbor Day, but will fly at full staff on Sunday and Monday.
Mandela was imprisoned for nearly 30 years while trying to bring racial equality to South Africa, then became the country’s president and a civil rights leader. He died Thursday. President Barack Obama ordered flags in the United States flown at half-staff in honor of Mandela through sunset Monday.
Clark pointed out Obama’s order was a proclamation and does not have the force of law. He said he would have made the same decision if he was in office in 2005, when President George W. Bush ordered flags flown at half-staff after the death of Pope John Paul II.
Clark became sheriff this year.
Pickens County officials said while Clark is free to do what he wants to do with the flag outside the sheriff’s office, American flags at other county offices will remain at half-staff to honor Mandela.
###
FLORIDA: Monument for Olustee Civil War Memorial Sparks Debate
The site of Florida’s biggest Civil War skirmish might sit 100 miles from Ocala, but a state plan to erect a monument to Union soldiers there hits too close to home for state Rep. Dennis Baxley.
Saying he does not want to witness the unraveling of a century-old tradition, the Ocala Republican is working on legislation to empower elected officials — and not just state parks managers — to decide whether the Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park should house a memorial to those who sought to bring Florida back into the Union at the barrel of a gun.
Battle of Olustee
Baxley was responding to the recent criticism leveled at the plan, and by extension state parks managers, by some long-time Floridians who believe Tallahassee is infringing on local history and efforts to preserve that.
The veteran lawmaker said he opposes this pursuit of “revisionist history” as well as the sentiment that the main question about the monument, as expressed by parks managers at a recent public meeting, was not if it should be installed but where would it go.
“That’s what got everybody riled up,” Baxley said of the session.
“You can’t go into a major monument site and start redefining it. When you put anything into perpetuity, people have a right to expect that. This is a very hallowed and sacred thing, and that’s how it’s hitting these people in North Florida.”
At issue is a request made in February by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. The group seeks to have a monument dedicated to their forebears in place by February to mark the 150th anniversary of the fight at Olustee.
Each February since 1976 a major re-enactment has been held to recall the events of Feb. 20, 1864, when about 5,500 Union troops moving west from Jacksonville encountered an equal-sized Confederate force that was dug in near a swamp situated about 15 miles east of Lake City.
A bloody five-hour battle ensued, at the end of which the Union troops retreated to Jacksonville. The Northern army never again ventured that deep into Florida.
In all, about 2,800 soldiers were killed, with that tally encompassing twice as many Yankees as Rebels.
The Olustee battlefield subsequently became Florida’s first state park.
That happened in 1912, when the first of three monuments established by the United Daughters of the Confederacy was unveiled on the grounds.
Located on a three-acre site, those memorials are dedicated to the battle itself and to the two Confederate generals who led the Southern troops that day.
In its proposal to state parks officials, the Sons of Union Veterans wrote that its mission is to “keep green” the memory of those soldiers who fought to “preserve the Union and purchased with their blood the end of slavery in our land.”
The group says it wants a monument, which it will pay for, “to complete a more balanced cultural picture” of the battle.
Specifically, that includes recognition of black troops who comprised one-third of the Union forces who fought there.
The state Division of Recreation and Parks has apparently endorsed the plan, saying in a report that a Union memorial would not conflict with the park’s purposes.
Parks managers recommend installing the Union monument in the general area of the current ones, yet “distant enough from the existing monuments to respect their symbolic integrity to the maximum extent possible.”
That would be “consistent” with the “commemorative functions” in that part of the park, and would not interfere with the areas utilized during the annual re-enactment.
Last week, parks managers convened a meeting in Lake City to discuss the project, and many critics among the 100 attendees, some of whom described themselves as descendants of Confederate soldiers, denounced a Union monument as an affront to the historical integrity of the site, according to the News Service of Florida.
The opponents, the News Service reported, included a black Confederate apologist named H.K. Edgerton, who led a chorus of “Dixie” while waving a Confederate battle flag, and a military veteran who likened the plan to installing a monument to Jane Fonda at the front of the Vietnam War Memorial.
Baxley said those feelings strongly registered with him — as a fifth-generation Floridian, member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and long-time funeral home and cemetery operator who understands the emotion attached to preserving the memory of the dead.
“I can understand why these pioneer families are offended,” he said. “Florida at that time was a part of the Confederacy. Those people were defending the civilian population and the state from an invasion.”
“This plan hasn’t been reviewed by anybody except park officials. I’m concerned about redefining it without any elected official giving consent or approval.”
“I don’t think it’s fair,” Baxley added.
The idea of one side erecting monuments to its Civil War foes is not a new one.
America’s most famous battlefield might offer the best example. In 1864, according to the National Park Service, a group of civic leaders in Gettysburg, Pa., formed the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association, with the idea to preserve parts of the area to commemorate the Union troops who fought there.
The group turned over their land to the federal government in 1895, when it was designated as a national military park.
But in the interim, in November 1886, a stone monument went up to honor troops from the 2nd Maryland Infantry, a Confederate unit that fought at Culp’s Hill, southeast of town.
It was the first memorial to Confederate troops at Gettysburg.
On its website, the Gettysburg Foundation, an educational group that works with the National Park Service, notes that some Union veterans protested the notion of recognizing their former enemies.
Yet, “(a)s the bitterness of the Civil War subsided, the idea of Gettysburg monuments honoring Confederate sacrifices was accepted,” the foundation observes.
So much had the ill will dissipated, the foundation adds, that by the late 19th century the U.S. War Department began encouraging the installation of monuments to Southern soldiers.
A database of monuments compiled by the Center for Civil War Research at the University of Mississippi indicates that 19 Gettysburg monuments are dedicated specifically to Confederate units or soldiers, including ones honoring Gens. Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet and John Bell Hood.
Each state of Dixie also has its own monument to honor its soldiers. The one commemorating Florida troops has stood since July 1963, the 100th anniversary of the battle.
But it’s not just the Yankees who are magnanimous in this regard. Monuments honoring Union troops have been installed at Andersonville, home of the notorious Confederate POW camp in Georgia; as well as in Chickamauga, another Georgia site and location of an important Southern victory, according to the Center for Civil War Research.
Generic monuments to the Northern dead can also be found in Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina, the center reports. Some of those were erected more than 100 years ago.
Baxley said he appreciates the effort by the Sons of Union Veterans to remember their ancestors.
But he believes that was accomplished by the installation of a 14-foot-tall monument to Union soldiers in the nearby Olustee cemetery, or can be done by erecting a new one away from the park’s monument area, such as on adjoining federal land, which is managed by the state.
Baxley added that he thinks the key distinction between a site like Gettysburg and Olustee is that the former is a national park, while the latter was entrusted to the state for preservation.
“We accepted that site in 1949 for preservation, and we shouldn’t redefine that without at least some elected officials approving it,” he said.
–Bill Thompson, Ocala Star Banner
###
