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CINCINNATI — The flag used by the Confederate States of America during the Civil War does not fly outside public buildings in Kentucky, but it could soon be flying down public roads.
The group Kentucky Sons of Confederate Veterans has proposed a license plate honoring troops who fought against the Union Army during the 1861-1865 war that ended slavery.
“The idea with the plate is that everything with the SCV is to honor Confederate soldiers, heritage and history, and the SCV and get this in front of the public,” said SCV spokesman Don Shelton.
The vanity plate would display an illustration of Confederate President and Kentuckian Jefferson Davis, along with the rebel flag.
“That’s the flag of our ancestors; that’s the flag they fought and died under,” Shelton said.
Kentucky is among three states with similar proposals, including Texas and Florida, and nine states already sell similar license plates to motorists.
Once the group files a formal application to allow the plates, review will determine if they meet state standards.
State officials declined to speculate on whether the license plates would be permitted.
And another story….
The Confederacy comes to Kentucky
The Civil War has not ended. Despite the surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox in April 1865, the war and its legacies still provoke political controversy.
Last week, for example, the Kentucky division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), a fraternal organization composed of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South during the Civil War and that attempts to promote a Southern interpretation of the war, proposed that the state issue vanity license plates bearing the images of the Confederate battle flag and Jefferson Davis, a son of Kentucky who served as the Confederacy’s only president.
The proposal has aroused a storm of protest in the state, particularly by African-Americans and black organizations such as the NAACP. An SCV spokesman, quoted by MSNBC, said that “the idea with the plate is that everything with the SCV is to honor Confederate soldiers, heritage and history, and the SCV and get this in front of the public” (presumably this quote is verbatim). But the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville branch of the NAACP, said the Confederate flag “is offensive. It is an emblem that is mostly associated with the Confederacy and slavery. It is offensive to African Americans.” Cunningham vowed to launch a legal challenge to the license plate, but the state’s Transportation Cabinet revealed that the SCV has yet to file an application for the plate.
Probably the SCV should not waste its time trying to do so. Although the SCV has successfully persuaded nine former Confederate states (there are 11 such states in all) to issue commemorative license plates, Kentucky will probably resist the group’s effort, even if the SCV does getting around to submitting a formal application.
When Government Fails In Kentucky 