Kudos to Virginia Flaggers
August 16, 2013
To the Editor:
On your recent news report of the Confederate flag to be placed along Interstate 95, I want to make several comments. First, I want to commend Susan Hathaway and the Virginia Flaggers for protesting every week, every month, for three years now, on the Boulevard in Richmond, against the misguided and frankly stupid decision of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for their refusal to allow a Confederate flag to be flown outside the Confederate Memorial Chapel.
Confederate Memorial Chapel. Confederate flag. Can’t get much more appropriate than that. I will be contacting my Virginia legislators to sponsor a bill requiring the VMFA to be required to fly the Confederate flag outside the chapel in this upcoming session.
Second, I commend her and the Virginia Flaggers for efforts to place a large Confederate flag on I-95 south of Richmond. Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America, and it is very appropriate to remind visitors, travelers and others of that role, because if the Sons of Confederate Veterans or Virginia Flaggers don’t, no one else in Richmond will.
If the National Association of Always Complaining People are against something, then I figure it’s a real good thing to do. My great-great-grandfather was a proud Confederate soldier in the 13th Virginia Cavalry and never owned slaves, but he fought because his state asked him to; each time I see that flag I think of him and how honoring of his service to the Commonwealth of Virginia it will be.
Finally, if the NAACP Virginia Chapter president thinks that if he were living in the Virginia of the Confederate States of America today, that he would still be in chains, such a pronouncement displays such ignorance of his current knowledge of world affairs in 2013 as to be too ludicrous to debate. I, and all my family will forever honor our ancestors who fought for the Confederate States of America, and this flag raising will be quite an honor toward that end.
Jesse L. Harrup Jr.
Colonial Heights
