Fort Worth-area councilwoman poses with Confederate flag even as protests convulse Texas
As protests against racism and police brutality engulfed Texas and the nation, a photo of Colleyville city councilwoman Tammy Nakamura posing with a Confederate flag was uploaded to a public album on her Facebook account.
The photo is from the Open Texas Rally 2020, according to the notation on Nakamura’s account. The purpose of the event, held May 30 in Southlake, was to encourage the reopening of the state’s economy.
A smiling Nakamura is pictured standing between two men, with the flag in front of her. The album was uploaded May 31, a weekend that included protests in Fort Worth, Dallas and elsewhere calling for changes to upend systemic racism and inequality in America in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Nakamura could not be reached for comment, despite attempts by the Star-Telegram to contact her by phone, text and email over the past several days. She was elected to the seven-member Colleyville City Council in 2016 and re-elected in 2019.
“The flag as it has been used historically is clearly anti-African American and anti-desegregation and anti-civil rights,” said Walter Buenger, who has researched the Confederacy and historical usage of the flag and is the Summerlee Foundation Chair in Texas History at the University of Texas. “And to post it now is incredibly insensitive. It’s just appalling. No matter what you believe, to do it now is to intentionally hurt people, to intentionally inflame the situation given what it has traditionally stood for.”
The flag featured in the picture with Nakamura is known as the Confederate battle flag. Buenger said its use was popularized in the 20th century, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s as a symbol of resistance to the Civil Rights movement and desegregation efforts.
Nakamura was endorsed by Empower Texans, the influential political group backed by West Texas billionaire Tim Dunn that has sought to fill local and state elected positions with Republicans who have hard-line conservative views on fiscal and social policies. Last year, referencing Nakamura and two other Empower Texans-backed Colleyville leaders, Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick said, “Elect these guys forever.”
Matthew Laity, a Colleyville resident, reposted a cropped version of Nakamura’s picture to the Facebook group Colleyville Citizens for Accountability. The posting led to 210 comments, many from people expressing displeasure with the photo or asking Nakamura to remove it from her account.
“The country is going through some much needed and overdue changes, and I hope to see many more at all levels of the government,” Laity said in a Facebook message to the Star-Telegram. “Unfortunately, it proves to be very difficult at our local level when city leadership is flaunting something that carries such powerful racial connotations.”
As of 2 p.m. Tuesday, the picture was still displayed on Nakamura’s Facebook page.
Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, said his first thought after seeing the picture of Nakamura with the Confederate flag was whether she could uphold her duty as a public official. He referenced the Supreme Court case Cooper v. Aaron, in which the justices ruled unanimously that elected leaders must follow judge’s orders made in accordance with the Constitution. He said when politicians pose with the Confederate flag it calls into question their adherence to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, the Reconstruction amendments.
“Does that mean you’re reaching out to a certain element?” Bledsoe said. “Does that suggest how you will govern? What does that mean when you hold up your hand? You say you swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Can you do it? That’s the issue.”
Colleyville Mayor Richard Newton did not immediately respond to a voicemail left on Tuesday afternoon asking for comment about the Nakamura photo,.
Public and private entities in Texas, in recent years, have phased out some usages of the Confederate flag and Confederate symbols. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state could reject the image of the flag on vanity license plates in 2015, and Six Flags removed its Confederate flag in 2017. A Children of the Confederacy plaque at the Texas Capitol that stated slavery was not the cause of the Civil War was removed from the state Capitol last year.
The last two weeks have featured further calls for Texas to eradicate Confederate symbols and to condemn racism. State GOP leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott and land commissioner George P. Bush, called on several county Republican officials to resign after sharing racist memes. On Tuesday, the Tarrant County commissioners voted to remove a Confederate monument from the county courthouse in downtown Fort Worth.
Buenger said these removals of Confederate symbolism must occur for the United States to mature into a more equal country and that it was not healthy for Tarrant County or the United States to have an elected leader posing with the Confederate flag.
“If you walk into the privacy of your own home — and not on Facebook — and sort of study up on the Confederacy and Confederate memorials and Confederate icons and Confederate this and Confederate that, fine,” Buenger said. “But to put it out in the public as she has done and as a city official ... maybe she can make an argument that she’s exercising her freedom.
“But actually what she’s doing is putting other people at risk. She is offending. She is not following what I would say is the basic tenet of all religions, which is ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 4:49 PM.
