Leesburg Bars SVC Logo On Sign
By Deborah Fitts
May 2006
LEESBURG, Va. — Amid an angry spate of opinions pro and con, the Town of Leesburg has removed signboards listing civic organizations rather than allow the local Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) camp to mount their Confederate battle-flag logo.
“I’m really upset that they just turned their back on a large part of U.S. history, and especially Virginia and local history,” said Ken Fleming, commander of the Leesburg-based Clinton Hatcher Camp of the SCV.
In March 2004 the camp approached the town about securing a spot on the four large signboards at the main entrances to town that list 18 local civic groups and their meeting dates. Fleming, who took command of the camp in December, said there was no desire to pick a fight or political statement.
“One of our members said, ‘Why aren’t we on this sign?’” Fleming recalled. Of the ensuing flap, he said, “We didn’t want this. We’re not rowdies.”
The SCV qualified for the sign as a bona fide community-minded organization with a variety of civic projects, including bringing speakers on Civil War history to local schools, funding a high-school essay prize, conducting an occasional preservation project, and hosting field trips, open to the public, to battlefields and other Civil War sites.
The town stalled for months, first objecting to the 1896 date on the SCV’s sign, the year of the group’s founding. The camp deleted the date and resubmitted the sign, but more months passed. Finally, said former camp commander Lewis Leigh, upon approaching the town again, the camp was told that the flag “might offend some people” and would not be welcome on the signboards.
The SCV threatened to sue. “There’d be no question about the outcome,” said Leigh, noting that several years ago the SCV won a lawsuit requiring Virginia, on First Amendment grounds, to offer license plates with the SCV logo.
Leesburg officials moved swiftly, “without telling anyone,” Leigh said, and in December took down all the signboards. The civic organizations have been told that the replacement signs, expected to go up in March, will list the groups but without any logos.
Vice Mayor Marty Martinez was quoted in the Loudoun Times-Mirror as saying, “What saddens me is that [this] symbolism is lost on some people. No matter [how] anybody tries to paint this picture of the Confederate flag being a symbol of historic value, it’s not.
“It is one of hatred and racism and one that I’ve had personal experience with in the South, and I just wish that they understand that there are better symbols to depict a Confederate soldier than that flag.”
Fleming said the logo-free signs will make it difficult for drivers to spot their favorite church or organization, and “They’ll be as worthless as worthless can be.”
He noted that Loudoun County is rife with Civil War history, including the battles of Ball’s Bluff, Aldie, Middleburg and Upperville, and countless troop movements throughout the war.
“Today all these local governments are looking for tourism dollars,” said Fleming. “They want you to spend your money, but not on Civil War history.”
He acknowledged, however, that minds would not be changed anytime soon about the Confederate flag, given the layers of symbolism applied to it by the Ku Klux Klan in the last century.
“We separate ourselves from that mentality,” Fleming said of the Klan’s racism. He pointed out that the Confederate veterans chose the battle flag, rather than the Confederate national flag, precisely because the battle flag was not a political symbol of the Confederacy but an honor to the fighting man.
“The Confederate soldier stood up for what he believed in,” Fleming said. “It didn’t make him right or wrong. Why forget anyone who helped shape this country? Why punish anyone because he believed he had the right to secede from a government that he felt didn’t represent him?”
