CRESTVIEW — The City Council will field residents' concerns about the Confederate battle flag during a special meeting on Thursday.
The 5:30 p.m. meeting at Warriors Hall is expected to attract representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Okaloosa County branch and Southern Strong, a growing Facebook group with 477 members from Okaloosa, Walton, Santa Rosa and Escambia counties.
Southern Strong's administrator, Tony Vance, of Pensacola, wanted "to have a group of people who wish to see the Confederate flags kept flying as a representation of history and heritage," the Facebook page states. "This is not about hate. No white supremacy groups."
Members have rallied to show their support for the rebel flag, which started disappearing from a number of public places, including Alabama and South Carolina's state Capitols, shortly after Dylann Roof, a white man, admitted to killing nine black people mid-June at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
The city of Crestview recently removed the battle flag from Confederate Park on East First Avenue, but resurrected it following public outcry. The Crestview Lions Club established the memorial in 1958 to honor William "Bill" Lundy, whom many people believe was Florida's last surviving Confederate soldier. Some Civil War historians, citing census records, dispute the claim and say he was just 5 years old at the end of the war.
More than 180 cars on Sunday caravanned from Almarante Cemetery in Laurel Hill, to the Walton County Courthouse and then to Confederate Park in Crestview, Vance said.
The 3 p.m. Crestview gathering featured prayer and a number of guest speakers including Delano Lundy, Bill Lundy's grandson.
"Our main goal was to show support, to show the mayor and the City Council that there are people that want that flag and that monument to stay," Vance said on Tuesday.
Since 1996, the City Council has heard numerous requests — particularly from the NAACP's Okaloosa County branch — to remove the flag from public property.
Resident Mae Reatha Coleman has been among those leading the effort.
"It is a symbol of racism and hatred, and to me it is a blood flag for the black generation," Coleman said in a letter to the editor. "Honoring it is the same as honoring a swastika flag flying against Jews."
Vance understands critics' concerns but disagrees.
"The Civil War was not started over slavery, it was started over states' rights," he said. "I believe the history is not being taught like it should be … the flag was stolen by the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi movement."
As for the NAACP, he said, "We respect their heritage, with Martin Luther King Day and anything that's their heritage. I just ask them to respect my heritage."
Southern Strong members will have more rallies, and they plan to expand on their mission with community service projects such as cleaning veterans' abandoned graves, Vance said.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Southern heritage group rallies for Confederate flag