Rep. Alvin Holmes, SPLC React to Removal of Confederate Flags
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The two parties responsible for the removal of the confederate battle flag from on top of Alabama’s capitol are now reacting to the rest of the confederate flags also being removed decades later.
Representative Alvin Holmes and reps from the Southern Poverty Law Center say the move is a victory.
Representative Alvin Holmes is applauding Governor Robert Bentley’s decision to remove confederate flags from the grounds of the state capitol.
“The confederate flag is divisive,” he said. “It represents slavery and oppression toward black people. And some people say well, the confederate flag is part of our heritage. Yeah, it’s a part of their heritage but it’s an ugly part.”
Holmes has been fighting to get confederate flags taken down since he was first elected in 1974.
“The first day the legislature went in session, I went to the mic and I said Mr. Speaker, I have a resolution.”
It was a resolution to remove all confederate flags from the premises of the state capitol and it wasn’t popular.
“And you almost, like somebody had thrown a bomb on the floor. They exploded. I ain’t never seen anything like it. Some of them went berzerk. I thought I had to throw a net over them to catch them.”
After several lawsuits, Holmes was successful in getting the confederate battle flag removed from the top of the capitol in 1993. He had help from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I would say it’s time for us to move beyond the symbolism of race and get to the substance of our racial problems,” said SPLC President Richard Cohen.
Cohen says the governor did the right thing by ordering the removal of the rest of the flags more than 20 years later.
“After the Civil War, there was this mythology of a lost cause,” he said. “If only the south had had more men….you know, those kinds of things. And it kind of romanticized the southern struggle and forgot that frankly, it was about slavery.”
