Pro-Confederate group to buzz Stock Show with battle flag flyover

Hoping to counter what it calls an “ISIS-style cleansing,” a southern heritage group plans to fly a 25-by-40 foot Confederate battle flag above the Stock Show grounds for two hours Saturday.

Calvin Allen, a Hudson Oaks saddle shop owner and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, organized the flyover in response to the Stock Show banning his group from displaying the battle flags during the annual All Western Parade on Jan. 16.

In past years, Fort Worth Stock Show officials allowed the familiar red-and-blue Confederate battle flag to be displayed in the parade. But in the last year the flag fell out of favor nationwide, as many people and organizations associate it with racism and violence.

“Unfortunately, groups and individuals who advocated hate and intolerance have embraced that flag,” said Stock Show spokesman Matt Brockman. “It’s sad that it happened, but it had gotten worse. We had been receiving complaints about the battle flag.”

Brockman emphasized that the policy only pertains to “participation in Stock Show events.”

“If others want to wear a Confederate [battle] flag onto the grounds, they’re free to do that,” Brockman said.

But Allen views the new rule as “destroying a tradition of over 100 years in Fort Worth.”

He pointed to past Fort Worth dignitaries like K.M. Van Zandt, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War.

“We consider western heritage to be Confederate heritage, because that’s what built Fort Worth,” Allen said.

Charles Lunsford, a spokesman for the South Carolina-based Save Southern Heritage, likened the new flag policy to ISIS, the Islamic terrorist group.

“It’s the same thing they do with the eradication of cultural heritage they don’t accept,” Lunsford said by phone from Georgia.

Saturday will be the fourth flyover Save Southern Heritage will be involved with since the group formed last year, Lunsford said.

Others were conducted at GOP presidential debates in Charleston, S.C. and Des Moines, Iowa and over the state capital in Tallahassee, Fla., on Robert E. Lee’s birthday, according to a news release.

“We want to embarrass people who think it’s chic to oppress other people,” Lunsford said.

Lunsford said the flag will carry the message “BANNED BY FtW RODEO - SSHE.US”.

Allen said the what battle flag stands for gets misconstrued.

“It represents our Southern heritage also represents the causes for what they fought — smaller government, not the slavery issue,” Allen said. “They want to bring up the slavery issue all the time, but it wasn’t really that big of a situation.”

At the Stock Show, “we don’t care to get tangled in a political debate,” Brockman said.

“People came to this area long before there ever was a Civil War,” Brockman said. “I think when people look at the history of Texas, they look toward the Alamo more than the Civil War. They look at the birth of the cattle industry.”

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This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Pro-Confederate group to buzz Stock Show with battle flag flyover."