While Orange County commissioners contemplate placing restrictions on the size of flags in the county, a Confederate battle flag has been hoisted along a major thoroughfare.
The flag was raised over the weekend on Highway 70 on the western outskirts of Hillsborough. The group Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County posted photos of the flag going up to the group’s Facebook page on Saturday night.
Plans have been in the works for weeks for the group to raise several flags throughout Orange County. That prompted the Orange County Board of Commissioners to work toward regulations of flag sizes and poles placed on private property.
“Tyranny and over oppressive government elect want to limit a property owners rights to show pride and honor for his history and legacy,” read the post on the ACTBAC NC Facebook page.
“This flag has nothing to do with Southern culture or heritage – and frankly, Southern culture deserves better than it,” Maya Little, a resident of Carrboro and a PhD student at UNC, said at a county commissioner meeting earlier this year. “The flag, historically and today, serves to intimidate and threaten people of color, and to promote an ahistorical understanding of the Civil War, of Jim Crow, (and) of the last 150 years of our history, rather than to create real bonds within this community.”
The push to raise flags across Orange County comes after a months-long campaign last year led to the Boards of Education in Orange County and Chapel Hill – Carrboro City Schools to ban the Confederate flag from school grounds.
Commissioner Renee Price said at that March meeting that the amendment would be a step in the right direction.
“I think that the public should understand…as we’ve heard from many of you who’ve had the courage to come up here and speak, that the Confederate flag is offensive,” Price said. “As much as people try to say that it is their heritage, it is offensive to many people.”
The Orange County Human Relations Commission is scheduled to host a community conversation Monday night on the proposed text amendment that is being weighed and would bring about flag size regulations. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. at the Whitted Building on Tryon Street in Hillsborough.
Photo via Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County Facebook Page
