Several groups gathered across North Texas Sunday to rally around the Confederate battle flag. According to a Facebook page, titled Stand by the Flag Rally, groups planned to meet in Denton, Arlington and Irving.
"People have been saying it’s racist to fly," Christopher Williams said. "It ain’t racist, it’s Southern heritage. People don’t know the true history behind the flag."
Williams was one of the first to gather outside a Walmart in Irving Sunday afternoon.
"It’s funny how everybody thinks that the flag is racist. It’s not – it’s just Southern pride," Williams said. "Proud to be where you’re from."
Nearby shoppers stopped to look or snap photographs of the rally, and those who did said the group had the right to assemble but not everyone agreed with their view of the flag represents.
"I have a problem with the flag itself, being African-American," Karesha Evans said, "I don’t know any African-American that doesn’t have a problem with the flag."
Lola Green, who is black, stopped by Walmart and told NBC 5 she grew up in the South and is from Charleston, South Carolina. She said she has no problem with people flying the Confederate flag.
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"Their flag is representative of Southern pride, a representative of rebellion," Green said. "It’s not against any current government; it’s of the past, it’s a historic artifact and they’re showing their pride and their right to fly that flag."
Green went on to say, “I’m OK with that, and I am a black American and I’m from the South and I understand the complexity of what they’re doing and what they’re saying. They are as proud of the American flag, of the traditional American flag, as they are the rebel flag."
Kimberlee Gould, brought her family to the rally in Irving and later joined the convoy of vehicles outside Texas Motor Speedway, which joined NASCAR in banning the Confederate flag, for a larger gathering.
"I think this whole thing is absolutely ridiculous," Gould said. "This is a battle flag, it’s not like it was ever flown as a national flag for the Confederate states. It was a battle flag only and wanting to erase history is sad. It’s part of our heritage, it’s part of the South, and they have no business trying to erase history."
Gould said, in her view, the flag is not about race but history.
"I am big in the history of it," Gould said. "People say the civil was fought over slavery, it was not fought over slavery – the South was screaming secession 40 years before they seceded from the Union, it was fought over state’s rights and it was fought over money, plain and simple."
