Mixed reaction from residents over Confederate flag flown in Burke County town

GLEN ALPINE, N.C. — A town in Burke County has allowed a group to raise the Confederate flag.

Town leaders in Glen Alpine said the flag will fly over downtown the remainder of the week as a memorial to Confederate soldiers.

Town officials said there are a number of Confederate soldiers buried at graveyards nearby, and they want to honor them.

Resident Hattie Rutherford said it is hard to look at the Confederate flag in downtown Glen Alpine without it bringing back childhood memories of a much different time.

"When I was growing up, you couldn't go eat at counters," Rutherford said. "You couldn't go and sit down in restaurants. You had to sit in the back of the bus."

For years, Glen Alpine has allowed a group that maintains the flagpole on town grounds to raise the Confederate flag the week before Memorial Day.
 
"Please don't be offended," Mayor James Wakeford said. "We don't want to offend nobody. We're just honoring our past soldiers."

Ricky Conger and his family live in Burke County and keep a flag in their front yard. He supports Glen Alpine keeping the flag as a way to remember those who fought and died for the Confederacy.

"If people would learn and read the history of the rebel flag, they would find out that flag is not for hatred," Conger said. "That's just the hatred in people's hearts."

James Summers, who saw the flag for the first time Tuesday morning, isn't sure about that and believes that Glen Alpine should follow what South Carolina did last year by removing the flag from the state capitol.

"They should take it down," Summers said. "They should take it on down and be done with it."

Jim Tinney, who owns an ice cream shop in town, doesn't have a problem with the flag for one week out of the year, with one exception.

"That the United States flag is on top," Tinney said.

The mayor said the flag will come down ahead of the holiday weekend but will remain in place for the next several days.

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