Where You Can Find Confederate Flag Flying in Delaware

In Delaware, the Confederate flag doesn't fly on government property, but it is visible among the state's residents on bumper stickers and homes, as well as museums.

As the country began to discuss the controversial flag after a shooting at a South Carolina black church killed nine people, Delaware also considered the issue although the state was "ambivalent about slavery and the cause of Southern secession during the Civil War," The News Journal reported. 

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At least one museum, the Marvel Carriage Museum, a state veteran's monument to the Delaware Grays, a Civil War unit, decided to continue to fly the Confederate flag at the building, the Journal said.

"The blood of a lot of American ancestors is on that flag," Jeffrey Plummer, a leader of an organization that honors the Delaware Grays, told the Journal. "We're simply honoring those veterans who fought for the South during the war between the states."

Others in Delaware argued, as national pressure continued, that even the monument flag should go and perhaps, as other states have done, be moved to a historical exhibit.

"The [Confederate] flag, in these days and times, does not move us to healing. It obviously has moved Mr. Roof to hurting and killing people," Chris Bullock, the president of the New Castle County Council, told the News Journal, referring to the man who was arrested for the South Carolina shooting. "That flag should be placed in a museum... The South is moving progressively. Delaware, being a former slave state, should join them."

In August, the News Journal reported that a Confederate flag rally held in southern Delaware drew dozens of people. The supporters told the newspaper they were standing up for U.S. history and freedom of speech.

But some spoke out against the support the flag is garnering. "That flag stands for blood," Delaware NAACP President Richard Smith told the Journal. "It stands for death. It stands for slavery. It stands for everything it stopped us from."

He supported the right of people to support the Confederate flag on their property as part of guaranteed First Amendment rights, Smith told the Journal that changes will occur.

"Don't try and hurt us because we ain't taking the hurt no more and the abuse no more," he said. "We are going to continue fighting racism with the law. They can keep on putting their flags up but at the end of the day, Delaware is going to change. Delaware is going to change for everybody."

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