All Dem hopefuls to speak at MLK rally held to protest flying of Confederate flag at SC Statehouse

[bigtree]

Democratic hopefuls will join Capitol rally
Event marks protest of Confederate flag

Associated Press
Monday, January 21, 2008

COLUMBIA --- An annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally held in part to criticize the flying of the Confederate flag on Statehouse grounds will provide the backdrop Monday in campaigning for a hotly contested presidential primary that gives black voters their first serious voice in the 2008 elections.

The top three Democratic candidates -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- are expected to speak at this year's "King Day at the Dome" . . .


The yearly rally remains a show of force in South Carolina for blacks, who cast nearly half the votes in the 2004 primary, which Mr. Edwards won.

Lonnie Randolph, the president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he plans to take aim at another, lesser-known monument on Statehouse grounds at this year's rally. He'll speak in part about a statue of staunch racist "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman. Words on the statue of the one-term South Carolina governor who served in the U.S. Senate from 1885 to 1918 make no reference to his calls to kill any black who dared try to vote or his white supremacist policies that created the Jim Crow-era South.


http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/012108/met_181195.shtml

[sunonmars]

1. is there a boxing ring round the back just in case.

[zanne]

2. I thought they had taken that flag down?

It seems to me, a few years ago (or so), the flag was removed because it was too controversial. What happened?

[Orsino]

3. They did. But pretty soon after the war, it was back up. n/t

[zanne]

4. Oh, crap! nt