A weekend celebration of our nation’s independence turned sour for parade goers in North Carolina after a local farmer turned his float into a moving advertisement for racism. Donnie Spell’s entry in the Hope Mills Fourth of July parade included a trailer full of watermelon adorned with the Confederate battle flag and signs reading “White History Month” and “HUG WHT PPL.”
The town’s Director of Parks and Recreation, Kenny Bullock, told WNCN that he asked Spell’s daughter-in-law to remove the signs before the paradewhich she didbut that they were put back on and displayed throughout the drive through town. Bullock said that Spell’s application only noted that he’d have 810 antique tractors and a trailer of watermelon for sale. Spell has appeared in past parades, and town officials have allowed him to wave the Confederate battle flag as “free speech,” Bullock said, despite its controversial history.
Best known as the banner for the pro-slavery South in the Civil War, the flag reappeared during the Civil Rights movement as a symbol against desegregation. State flags were in changed in to include the design, including in Arkansas and Mississippi, which flew the flag until 2001. At the University of Mississippi, one of many schools where protesters tried to keep Black students from registering in the 1960s, the flag is a common appearance at football games. It continues to fly from Ole Miss to the capital, Jackson, after residents voted overwhelmingly in 2001 to keep it as a part of their state flag. Meanwhile, more than 100 conventions and business organizations boycotted the state of South Carolina in the early 2000s to protest the flag’s flying atop the statehouse. The Southern Poverty Law Center counts more than 500 extremist groups that include the flag as part of their symbol.
