Remove Confederate battle flag from Veterans Park
However sensible the reasons for deciding in 1976 to include the Confederate battle flag in the historic flag pavilion at Wichita’s Veterans Memorial Park, they do not justify its continued display.
Not when white supremacists and others such as the alleged Charleston, S.C., church shooter more recently have taken what already was a shameful historical icon and made it a visual call to hatred and violence, co-opting it as the Nazis did the swastika.
Not when even Southern states are finally hurrying to remove the racist symbol from public grounds and official use, as Alabama did Wednesday outside its Capitol and leaders in South Carolina and Mississippi advocated this week.
And not given that Kansas was a free state, having proudly emerged from a bloody border struggle on the right side of history and human rights. That status should enable Wichitans and city officials to confront the flag issue with less emotion and ambivalence than is possible in the South, where it is bound up in heritage and culture.
The argument for why Wichita’s John S. Stevens Bicentennial Memorial Flag Pavilion should include a Confederate battle flag could be made more easily four decades ago, when an advisory panel of academics, politicians, veterans and other citizens planning the downtown monument selected for display 13 of the hundreds of flags that had flown over what is now American soil.
The plaque at the pavilion explains the flag’s status as the “best known and generally recognized symbol of the South until April 9, 1865.”
Even more thoughtful explanation came from the park’s longtime caretaker and advocate, the late Philip Blake, when its display was challenged a decade ago. Responding to then-columnist Mark McCormick, now director of the Kansas African American Museum, Blake wrote in The Eagle: “The Confederate battle flag was included because the entire display was to honestly depict the forces that profoundly affected the molding and definition of the American character. To do this, both sides of the Civil War had to be given recognition. The Confederate flag, also known as the Stars and Bars, was rejected because it honored the Confederacy itself, while the battle flag, also known as the Southern Cross, was felt to recognize the Southern troops.”
But none of that context is evident to Wichitans and visitors who drive or walk by Veterans Memorial Park in 2015. All they see is a recognized symbol of racial hate, violence and divisiveness accorded a place of honor in a city-owned park, in a line of European, Colonial and later American flags leading to the modern Old Glory. Calling the pavilion a museum doesn’t help, because its exhibits are not behind doors and glass but outside and visible to all.
City leaders should take down the Confederate battle flag without hesitation – and let some other banner help visually tell the American story without diminishing the beauty and appreciation of Veterans Memorial Park.
For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman
This story was originally published June 24, 2015 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Remove Confederate battle flag from Veterans Park."