The stars and bars of the Confederacy left Spencer Moore aghast, as a native southerner, when she saw the rebel battle flag displayed on a neighbor’s garage here in Ridgefield.
“It just blew me away when I was driving out on Sunday, and we’re all in the car, I was like ‘Oh my gosh, is that what I think it is?’ ”
The flag’s sudden appearance in the neighborhood was shocking because it came just over a month after nine worshipers were shot to death at a black church in Charleston, S.C. The accused killer had posed for a photo with a gun and the Confederate flag and posted it to a website, along with a racist rant.
This led to a movement for the removal of the Confederate flag from public display in many places in the South, including the South Carolina statehouse grounds.
Brant Bloom, who hung the flag on his garage on Twin Ridge Road, screened by large evergreen trees but still visible from the street, said he wasn’t motivated by hatred but history.
“This flag to me, my friends and my family does not represent any hatred or racism,” he said in statement e-mailed to The Press and posted on his Facebook page. “It merely represents our history of a nation and the pride of our brothers and sisters from the South. They are our fellow Americans and this flag represents their southern roots, pride, and heritage.
“We can not change history, we can only learn from it so the bad doesn’t happen again. Our politicians and journalists have to stop stirring up all this negativity in our nation. That’s all.”
But the Moores do not see the flag as a source of pride or solidarity.
“I’m from North Carolina, originally. Our kids were born in Charleston, we got married in Charleston, we got to know a lot of native Charlestonians,” Moore said. “We were just — after everything that happened down there with the flag and all, after the church massacre — I don’t understand it.”
Her husband, Rhys Moore, had a similar reaction.
“Maybe we are more sensitive to the stars and bars as we lived in Charleston for many years, our kids were born there, our house was right in the historic district, not far from the church,” he said. “So we know plenty of folks in that neighborhood and feel the flag has become a symbol of hatred as opposed to true southern culture.”
Moore said she respects her neighbor’s freedom to display any flag he chooses on his property.
“Of course, it’s their right to put it up,” she said, “just like we have the right to not like seeing it.”
The confederate battle flag was visible from the street, through pine boughs, hung on a garage off Twin Ridge Road. —Macklin Reid photo
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