Memorial Day Confederate Flag Burnings Spark Controversy

A Sarasota artist’s plan to spark conversation this Memorial Day by organizing Confederate flag burnings in 13 states across the nation is igniting controversy instead.

John Sims and those who have taken up his rallying call say they intend to simultaneously burn the flags to start conversations about the symbol’s meaning, WESH reported.

Rollins College professor Julian Chambliss, who is heading up a burning and burial in the Orlando area, explained.

“When we talk about the Confederate flag, as it exists in modern American culture, that’s actually a flag that is attached to the mythology that was created after the war by people who lost the war and at some level struggled with the reality of Southern defeat,” Chambliss told the station.

The Confederate flag, he added, also represents an oppressive chapter in American history; one, he says, deserves closure.

The flag burnings will be staged as part of a conceptual art project headed up by Sims. The goal is to retire the flag’s meaning as a “symbol of terror,” Fox news reported.

Sims, 47, told the network it’s his intent to encourage people to “reflect upon and critique the complex nature of the Confederate flag as a lasting symbol of terror.”

Be that as it may, the multistate project is drawing fire from groups, such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who call the move disrespectful.

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“This is not only terribly offensive, but astonishingly idiotic,” Ben Jones, a former Democratic congressman from Georgia and spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans told Fox news.

Jones says the move is divisive and vows that his group will put up 10 more flags for each one burned.

Chambliss, however, insists the project is being staged with respect in mind, meant to be more like a funeral rather than a protest, he told WESH.

Sims has also launched what he calls the Recoloration Proclamation. That project is a “flag exhibition and film project that deals with issues of race, religion, and corporate branding,” he explained on his website.

As for the Confederate flag, he says, “(it and) its image of bars and stars is undeniably a vexing symbol of the Civil War, paralyzed race relations, and the search for Southern heritage. As a native of Detroit, a very African-American city, where whites flee the city after dark, I was shocked at the ever presence of the Confederate flag in the south and the current debates in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi,” he wrote. “Why must my visual field be subject to images of a lost war? Why must I endure the discomfort I feel when I see the pickup truck with the flag? Or even worse, the numbed out black Southerners who have learned to tune all it out.”

Aside from Orlando’s planned burning, the events will be staged in such cities as New Orleans, Nashville and Clarkston, Ga.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it disrespectful or is it time to lay this symbol to rest? Tell us what you think by commenting below!

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