Confederate flag supporters rally at private York cemetery without permission

The Confederate battle flag that was removed from South Carolina’s Statehouse grounds will not come down in York – even in a private cemetery where flying it near a Confederate monument has been banned.

A group upset with Rose Hill Cemetery’s ban on flying the Confederate flag held a short pro-flag rally Saturday next to the cemetery’s Confederate soldier monument, which sits between the graves and Liberty Street.

In a video from the event called “Rally to the Colours,” the group clearly has vehicles parked on the grass of the cemetery near the monument.

Many people wore Confederate clothes and one speaker even waved a saber or sword as he spoke.

The cemetery’s board did not give the group permission to come onto private property, cemetery custodian John Hiott said Monday, and he did not know about the event until Sunday.

The cemetery is home to scores of Confederate dead, but many others without such ties also are buried there.

In June, after police charged a white supremacist in connection with the shooting deaths of nine black people at a Charleston church, the cemetery board announced it would begin discouraging the long practice of placing Confederate flags near the monument.

“We are trying to preserve dignity here,” Hiott said, “but it is becoming more difficult.”

Confederate flag supporters maintain it represents Southern heritage, but many believe it represents slavery and racism. Dylann Roof, the man charged in the Charleston church slayings, was seen in photos with the flag, and it has been used by the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.

A few dozen Confederate flag supporters, mainly from North Carolina, waved flags Saturday afternoon, police said, and were joined by local people that swelled numbers to what Don Wood, one of the attendees, said was over 100 people at the event. Police intervened when some of the flags were draped over Liberty Street.

The pro-flag group of mainly motorcyclists told police they were from Gastonia, N.C., and several wore insignias from a mechanized cavalry group of Southern heritage activists, said Lt. Dale Edwards, the York Police Department patrol supervisor working Saturday.

Patrol officers rode by a couple of times when the flag wavers were there, Edwards said, and he then discussed with organizers the traffic problem flag-wavers had caused by draping large flags over Liberty Street in front of the cemetery. The group left soon afterward, Edwards said.

A website for Sons of Confederate Veterans Mechanized Cavalry shows a Confederate flag rally scheduled for “everywhere” Saturday. Efforts to reach the group were unsuccessful on Monday.

The group held a “save the flag” rally in late June in Gastonia, about 20 miles north of York.

York Mayor Eddie Lee said he has concerns about protesters using private property without permission.

“This is a private cemetery that is inside the city limits; it is not public property,” Lee said. “I was told after I heard of this that the board gave no permission for any such event.”

In July, a pro-flag group called Southern Heritage applied for a permit to march from downtown York to the cemetery, City Manager Charles Helms said. The group was told it could march, but could not use cemetery property without permission from cemetery officials. The cemetery board denied that request in July, Hiott said, and the rally never happened.

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 6:21 PM with the headline "Confederate flag supporters rally at private York cemetery without permission."