A few Confederate graves on federal land, including precisely one in Georgia, became the spark this week for a racially charged debate in Congress over the battle flag.
House GOP leaders yanked a wide-ranging spending bill Thursday and called for calm, putting off a vote on placing Confederate flags at national park gravestones.
Democrats seized upon the issue and pressed further in an unsuccessful effort to boot the state flag of Mississippi — which incorporates the Rebel war emblem — from the U.S. Capitol.
The false steps and sharp tones were a marked contrast to South Carolina, where legislators voted to take down a battle flag flying on the state Capitol’s grounds. Gov. Nikki Haley eagerly signed the bill, which grew out of response to the racially motivated killings of nine churchgoers in Charleston, S.C.
Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, discord reigned.
“Why can’t we move to the 21st century?” U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, asked in a booming floor speech.
Lewis, a longtime civil rights leader, spoke of seeing the Confederate battle flag on the helmets of sheriff’s deputies who clubbed him and other marchers on a Selma, Ala., bridge in 1965.
“We need to bring down the flag,” Lewis said. He added, “We need not continue to plant these seeds in the minds of our people.”
When asked by reporters whether he could understand Lewis’ point, U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican, replied: “Well, if I believe it comes from heritage, does he understand where I’m coming from?”
Westmoreland also drew outrage from Georgia Democrats by saying he does not think the flag is "a racist symbol" and Confederate soldiers were fighting for their states and not slavery.
House Speaker John Boehner tried to defuse the tension by calling for a bipartisan commission.
“I actually think it’s time for some adults here in the Congress to actually sit down and have a conversation about how to address an issue,” Boehner said. “I do not want this to become a political football.”
Just a few graves
A 2010 National Park Service directive allows groups to place small Confederate flags at the graves of Confederate soldiers around Confederate Memorial Day in states that celebrate the holiday, including Georgia.
There are precious few, since national cemeteries were created for Union dead, and in some cases local groups moved Confederate remains to local government land or private property. At Andersonville National Cemetery in southwest Georgia, there is just one Confederate grave.
(Marietta National Cemetery is managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, so it is not in the national park system; the neighboring Marietta Confederate Cemetery is privately run.)
As the House debated a bill to fund the National Park Service and other agencies, U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., introduced an amendment to prevent Confederate flags from decorating any grave on federal ground. No one objected, and it passed by voice vote.
But when word spread among Southern Republicans, they were not pleased, and they threatened to sink the vote on the entire bill, covering the Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies.
So House leaders allowed a new amendment by U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., that would keep existing procedure and reverse the voice vote. The amendment’s defenders pointed to the fact that it was simply continuing Obama administration policy, including a new directive that national parks not sell stand-alone Confederate flag merchandise in their gift shops.
It “simply codifies existing law that’s been in place for five years, which allows the states to recognize the historical significance on dates of their choosing, while at the same time recognizing sensitivities that many people have with the flag,” said U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, a Monroe Republican.
But Democrats marched to the floor in opposition, and a news media firestorm erupted. House leaders pulled the entire spending bill, which Boehner said “will sit in abeyance.”
‘Knife in the wound’
The opposition was not done. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., forced a vote on removing the Mississippi flag from the Capitol because it contains the Confederate battle emblem — the last state flag so adorned.
As Republicans grumbled about grandstanding, Pelosi’s move was defeated along party lines. Democrats continued to hit the floor and the television cameras to denounce the flag.
Boehner did not specify what his "conversation" on Confederate issues would cover. Lewis and others have said they want to remove some statues in the Capitol, including one of Georgia's Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy. But even some members of the the Congressional Black Caucus believe that would go too far.
Atlanta Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott dismissed the idea of a commission: “To do what?” He compared the battle flag, used as a symbol of defiance to integration, to “a knife in the wound.”
“South Carolina, where the Confederacy was born, where the first shots were fired, they did this marvelous thing of removing it, taking the knife out,” Scott said. “And the Congress is just going to put it back in.”
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