SC could ban Confederate flags on license plates if bill becomes law
South Carolina could stop producing license plates featuring the Confederate flag, under a bill introduced in the legislative session beginning in January.
Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, is sponsoring the bill that would ban the state Department of Motor Vehicles from putting the controversial flag on license plates. Currently, the DMV offers specialty license plates with the emblem of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which features the flag that flew in front of the S.C. State House until 2015.
“Each special license plate shall not contain a Confederate flag,” the bill reads, according to WCSC TV in Charleston.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is a registered charitable organization whose members must be able to show descent from a veteran of the Confederate military during the Civil War. Sales of the $30 plates go to support its South Carolina chapter. The plates are valid for two years, WCSC reports.
There are currently 788 active plates in South Carolina bearing the Confederate flag, the Charleston Post and Courier reports. If the bill becomes law, those plates could not be renewed.
But the group and its flag-draped seal have become a point of controversy in the ongoing debate around symbols of the Confederacy.
South Carolina removed the flag from a site next to the Confederate Soldiers Monument on the State House grounds after a white supremacist killed nine people in a historically African-American church in Charleston in 2015. This year, focus on racist symbols was renewed when the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody triggered widespread protests, including one in Columbia that turned violent.
But supporters of the flag argue it represents a part of the state’s history that shouldn’t be discarded.
“The Confederate Battle Flag is a flag of the soldier not of the government,” said Preston Wilson, commander of the Fort Sumter Camp of the Sons of the Confederacy in Charleston, in a statement to the TV station. “Many South Carolinians died under the banner while doing what they thought was necessary to defend their home from what was viewed by them as an invasion. Their memory deserves to live on.”
“Cancel culture shall not prevail in the Palmetto State,” Wilson said.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 10:44 AM.
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