Confederate flags taken down from Alabama state Capitol

KIM CHANDLER, Associated Press
MARTIN SWANT, Associated Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Four Confederate flags were taken down from the grounds of the Alabama Capitol on Wednesday at the order of Gov. Robert Bentley.

Bentley said he issued the order late Tuesday after ensuring he had the authority to have the flags removed. He said it was important to "honor history," but that could be done without flying the flag on the Capitol grounds.

"It has become a distraction all over the country right now," Bentley said. "Off and on, it has always been a distraction."

Four Confederate flags — the first three official flags of the Confederacy and the square-shaped Confederate battle flag — flew at each corner of an 88-foot-tall Alabama Confederate Monument beside the Alabama Capitol.

An Associated Press reporter watched state employees remove three of the flags and fold them and take them inside the Capitol building before 10 a.m. The fourth already had been removed earlier Wednesday.

Two men who said they were members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans organization arrived shortly afterward to protest. When a group of black men, including the chief of staff for an Alabama Democrat who planned to introduce a resolution calling for the flags' removal, came to see that the flags had been removed, they spoke and shook hands with the flag supporters.

Calls to remove Confederate symbols that dot the Old South reignited after the massacre of nine people at a black church in South Carolina last week. The white suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, posed in photos displaying Confederate flags and burning or desecrating U.S. flags.

The Confederate flag used to fly over the Alabama Capitol, following a 1963 order from former Gov. George C. Wallace during a fight with the federal government over ending school segregation.

Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, led a fight in the 1990s to remove the rebel banner from the dome. A judge ruled against the state, which appealed. Then-Gov. Jim Folsom in 1993 made a decision that the Confederate flag, which was taken down in 1992 during dome renovations, would not be put back atop the Capitol when those renovations were complete.

Holmes on Tuesday said that he would file a legislative resolution to remove the flags from the Capitol grounds.

"I think most people realize it's divisive," Holmes said on Tuesday. "It has no place on a public building."

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