A North Carolina county has given a rural volunteer fire department an ultimatum after its refusal to take down a Confederate flag waving over its station.
The Charlotte Observer reports that Montgomery County commissioners have decided to restrict funding for the Uwharrie Volunteer Fire Department if it will not take the flag down and end a dispute that has simmered for months. According to several accounts, complaints about the flag date back several years.
The Uwharrie department was organized as a nonprofit corporation in 1983 and occupies a privately-owned building, but it still receives money from the county to provide fire protection services.
County commissioners sent a letter to the department saying they will limit funding until the flag is removed, paying only for fuel and maintenance costs for the two county-owned trucks the firefighters operate. The county also said it will replace the Uwharrie name on the vehicles with new graphics "in support of the county's stance on equal rights and freedom of speech."
The Observer could not reach Uwharrie fire officials for comment, but the department has previously said it relies heavily on donations from a community that supports flying the flag.
"We feel that we would not continue to receive the financial support needed to meet our expenses if we remove our flags," the department wrote in a letter to county commissioners in August. "In our opinion, the protection of life and property outweighs the few people that choose to be offended and have a perverted view of a symbol that is part of our community's history and heritage."
Confederate flags and monuments have long divided Southerners who see them as either honored symbols of the sacrifices made during the Civil War or tokens of in-your-face racism, a debate which reached a boiling point this past summer in Charlottesville, VA, when a woman was killed as violence erupted at a protest over the removal of a Confederate monument.
