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Title: Alabama councilman removes Confederate flags from graves
Source:
Dothan Eagle
URL Source: http://www.dothaneagle.com/dea/news ... erate_flags_from_graves/69780/
Published: Apr 24, 2009
Author: Emily Edge/Media General News Service
Post Date: 2009-04-28 03:13:28 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 293
Comments: 9
Mary Norman was shocked Thursday afternoon when Auburn Councilman Arthur L. Dowdell pulled up a Confederate flag placed on her great-grandfather’s grave and snapped it in half, she said. Dowdell, who denies snapping the flag, said Thursday he was picking up his daughter from Auburn Junior High School near the cemetery when several people told him they “had a problem” with the flags. He drove to the cemetery and started pulling up flags, he said. “It’s offensive to me,” he said. “To me, it represents the Ku Klux Klan and racism.” The United Daughters of the Confederacy placed the flags earlier this week, as they have done for 50 years, in preparation for a celebration Sunday of Confederate Memorial Day, Norman said. Confederate Memorial Day will be celebrated as a state holiday in Alabama Monday. “I really didn’t know exactly how to respond to him,” she said. “I happen to be a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. I was very surprised, especially (as he is) a city councilman. I was amazed.” Norman was not personally involved in placing the flags. “I’m a historian,” she said. “We’re not about hate, we’re not about anything like that. We just want to honor our state’s rights, and I’ve got Confederate ancestors, and I feel we should have the ability to do that.” Norman and a friend were taking inventory of graves at Pine Hill Cemetery in Auburn when Dowdell drove up and asked who put up the flags, she said. “One of the flags had been placed on my great-grandfather’s grave, who was a Confederate soldier,” Norman said. “He just got very upset, and he went over to my great-grandfather’s grave, picked up the flag and broke it in two.” She said Dowdell did not know the plot she stood on was her family’s. The flags were placed on soldiers’ graves as a mark of respect, she said. He pulled up Confederate flags from other soldiers’ graves, too, she said. Dowdell said in his years as councilman, he had never seen so many Confederate flags in one place. “I’m going on the record that this will never happen again,” Dowdell said. “This will never happen again as long as I’m on the city council.” Dowdell denied intentionally snapping the flag. “It might have snapped itself,” he said. “If it did, so what? If I had my way, I would have broke them all up and stomped on them and burned them. That flag represents another country, another nation.” Auburn Mayor Bill Ham said he was unaware of any incidents at the cemetery but said he talked with Dowdell Thursday afternoon. Ham said his understanding was that all city cemeteries have covenants governing how and what types of decorations can be placed on graves, except for Pine Hill because it is so old. Ham said he believed Dowdell asked an assistant city manager to look into making policies equal for cemeteries across the city. “The bottom line is those grave plots are deeded property,” Ham said. “We sell those. So they are sold to the family of the individuals, and I think (plot owners) have a right to do exactly what they did, according to the city attorney.” Ham said in his conversation with Dowdell, the councilman suggested the flags be placed on the graves for a shorter period of time, perhaps for 24 hours before the event. For now, the remaining flags will stay on the graves because of the lack of covenant governing Pine Hill, Ham said. But that could change in coming years. “I certainly think we need to be consistent in all the cemeteries with whatever the policy is, not only with this, but with everything,” Ham said. “The council has got to make that decision.”
Poster Comment: Porch-monkey chimp-out alert!!
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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
The good councilman should've lost some front teeth.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Teeth? that SOB should have been shot.. touch any Grave of my Family and I will respond, and I won't be kind in doing so..
..and had the broken flagstick shoved up his ass. Graves are private property. The flags are constitutionally protected. This man deserves some phone calls and impeachment by the locals.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition "Now I will be a total attention whore and show the world how offended I am. I can be famous and everyone will know how holier-than-thou I am and they can make a movie of my life and I can be on Larry King! WOOOO HOOOOOO!" "ME ME ME! LOOK AT ME! See how offended I am?!?!" "when several people told him they “had a problem” with the flags. " I bet that's a lie. .
It's a forum post, not a doctoral thesis. Click for Privacy and Preparedness files
Sure it did. They do that all the time. Just jump up from wherever they happen to be and break themselves in two. A flag's way of committing suicide I reckon. I don't know what they get so depressed about. Porch-monkey chimp-out alert!!
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. I guess nothing is sacred anymore. Mr. Councilman should be careful in this political climate. I'm sure he is not afforded the protection that his counterparts are in big gov. Such a public display of disrespect could, lets just say, cause serious injury in some parts of the country.
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Thomas Jefferson
In case you had any doubts
It's the second mouse that gets the cheese
Looks like Keyes, doesn't he?
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Nigger.
Everything lasts and everything ends. Longer than our children could ever imagine, faster than we could ever imagine. Children are the stuff of life; god was right to deny us immortality.
#2. To: IndieTX (#1)
(Edited)
The good councilman should've lost some front teeth.
#3. To: Refinersfire (#2)
Auburn Councilman Arthur L. Dowdell
#4. To: X-15, IndieTX, All (#0)
(Edited)
“It’s offensive to me,”
It's a fine line between being too specific and long winded and therefore too irritating to bother to read, and being too cryptic and therefore too irritating to try to interpret.
#5. To: X-15 (#0)
(Edited)
“It might have snapped itself,” he said.
Lord Acton
#6. To: X-15 (#0)
#7. To: X-15 (#0)
Councilman Arthur L. Dowdell
#8. To: Flintlock (#7)
Lord Acton
#9. To: X-15 (#0)
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