I trust you saw this comment by the well-known bigot, Colin Powell:
>>S.Carolina Confederate flag should go-Colin Powell
Updated 11:10 PM ET February 14, 2000
HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Confederate battle flag atop South Carolina's Statehouse, which has become a presidential campaign issue, is a personal "affront" and should be removed, retired Gen. Colin Powell said Monday.
Powell, a prominent black Republican mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate or Cabinet member, said the flag was a symbol of the racial segregation he encountered in the South in the early 1960s.
"I'd take it down," Powell said in response to a question at a Houston news conference. "When I look on the state Capitol and see that flag and I remember 1962, it's an affront to me and it ought to be an affront to all Americans."
Powell was referring to his experience driving through the segregated South on his way to military training in North Carolina in 1962, the year the flag was placed on South Carolina's Capitol dome.
"I had to go nonstop the whole way because there wasn't any place in all those states where I could find a motel that I could put my wife into on my way to Vietnam to fight for my country," he said.
"That flag was put up as a symbol of that system, so every time I see it I'd like to see the heritage they talk about," said Powell, who was in Houston to accept the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award from the Holocaust Museum Houston.<< |
