Michigan Flag Businesses Rejecting Confederate Flag

Michigan’s largest flag company has decided to stop selling the Confederate flag, seen as a symbol of racism in the days since Dylann Roof, the suspect in last week’s massacre in a black church in South Carolina, was shown brandishing it in widely circulated pictures.

Bill Miles, the longtime owner of American Flag and Banner in Clawson, told The Detroit News the choice to discontinue the flag was made for him because four of the manufacturers of the banner have stopped making it.

Earlier this week, retail giant Walmart said it would discontinue merchandise featuring the Confederate flag, and Sears, eBay and Amazon followed suit. Walmart’s decision came on the heels of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call on her state’s legislature to remove the flag from the capitol grounds.

Jane Miles, co-owner of the Clawson flag business with her husband, told the Detroit Free Press the days since the racially motivated shooting that left nine people dead in the Charleston church have been “a public relations nightmare” for her company.

The rejection of the Confederate flag represents a cultural shift that, though sudden, has been decades in the making, renewing long-standing debates over whether the flag honors the South’s history or flies as a snapping reminder of a time when African-Americans were bought and sold in the slave trade.

Tim Mohney, owner of Flags Unlimited in Kentwood, told the Free Press he won’t replenish his inventory with the Confederate flag when they’re gone – and that could happen sooner rather than later. He said the customers have been frantically trying to locate the Confederate flags, though they’ve never been a popular desing in the past.

“We don’t need to sell them,” he said.

Related:

• Walmart Clearing Shelves of Confederate Flag Merchandise
• The General Lee Will Keep an Honored Place in Car Museum
• S.C. Governor Calls for Confederate Flag’s Removal
• White Supremacist Who Inspired Charleston Church Shooter Gave to GOP Candidates

Bill Miles told The Detroit News that manufacturers are discontinuing the long-time symbol of Southern pride.

Cheryl Lawrence told the Free Press that she has sold her stock of Confederate flags, and won’t get more after the manufacturer stopped making them.

“I’ve always sold the Confederate battle flag. It’s a historical flag,” she said. “Do I believe it has connotations of racism? Yes. I believe it’s a sign of hate, like the swastika was.”

Jane Miles told the Free Press she will likely destroy the remaining flags in the Clawson store’s inventory after being pressured from a customer.

Connie Clark of All-American Flag Co. in Brockway in St. Clair County doesn’t plan to stop selling the Confederate flags at the business owned by her parents. Most customers are Civil War re-enactors, she said.

“I can’t see a reason that we would have to stop making those,” she told The Detroit News.

However, the supplier, Eder Flag Manufacturing Co., of Oak Creek, WI, said in an email to Clark that it’s no longer going to manufacture the Confederate flag.

“Our thoughts and sympathies are with the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in Charleston,” the company said in the email. “Our hope moving forward is that all communities are able to live together in unity.”

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Photo by Stuart Seeger via Flickr/Creative Commons