SLRC CONTINUES INVESTIGATION IN RINGGOLD DEPOT CASE
SLRC Chief Trial Counsel Kirk Lyons is expected to pay a visit to Ringgold, Georgia, early next week to confer with local SCV leaders and obtain further information about the removal of a Confederate Battle Flag from a display at the historic Ringgold Depot on the site of the Battle of Ringgold Gap, a Confederate victory in which Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne successfully repulsed an attack by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker on November 27, 1863.
In 2003 the town undertook to restore the depot and add a brick walkway, with some bricks bearing the names of about 750 Confederate soldiers who embarked from Ringgold Depot to fight in various theaters of the war. The local SCV camp purchased and contributed a Confederate fieldpiece as a centerpiece for the memorial area. Four flags, including the Confederate Battle Flag, were later installed on poles at the site; however, in February of 2005 local representatives of the NAACP told the Town Council that they objected to the Battle Flag’s presence at the depot, and in March of that year the Council voted to remove it and to substitute a replica of the Hardee-pattern unit flag – a white oval on a white-framed dark blue field – on grounds that the Hardee flag would have been carried by most of the units involved in the Ringgold action.
SCV members countered that the Battle Flag, as a soldiers’ and later a veterans’ flag, was the appropriate flag, as the display was intended to honor all Confederates who left for all theaters of the war from Ringgold Depot, and not just those involved in the action there.
Southern Legal Resource Center
In 2003 the town undertook to restore the depot and add a brick walkway, with some bricks bearing the names of about 750 Confederate soldiers who embarked from Ringgold Depot to fight in various theaters of the war. The local SCV camp purchased and contributed a Confederate fieldpiece as a centerpiece for the memorial area. Four flags, including the Confederate Battle Flag, were later installed on poles at the site; however, in February of 2005 local representatives of the NAACP told the Town Council that they objected to the Battle Flag’s presence at the depot, and in March of that year the Council voted to remove it and to substitute a replica of the Hardee-pattern unit flag – a white oval on a white-framed dark blue field – on grounds that the Hardee flag would have been carried by most of the units involved in the Ringgold action.
SCV members countered that the Battle Flag, as a soldiers’ and later a veterans’ flag, was the appropriate flag, as the display was intended to honor all Confederates who left for all theaters of the war from Ringgold Depot, and not just those involved in the action there.
Southern Legal Resource Center
posted by Chuck Demastus at
9:10 PM
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