KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A Confederate flag that has hung in a saloon and dance hall on the Platte County Fairgrounds since 1963 will not be displayed during this week's festivities, but no final decision on the banner's future has been made, board members said.
The flag was taken down Wednesday after questions were raised about its hanging in the Dirty Shame Saloon on the fairgrounds, which is on private property near Platte City. The flag has become a flashpoint elsewhere in the country since nine black people were killed last month at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The alleged shooter, who is white, was shown in photographs waving Confederate flags.
Judy Davis, vice president of the fair board, said most board members didn't even realize the flag was hanging as saloon stage background, which Davis said "was not a place of honor."
"It was part of the decorations since 1963," she said. "It's like when you have a picture on the wall for a long time and don't even notice it until someone moves it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing and Charleston brought a lot of those issues to light. But I guarantee our fair is open to anyone who walks through the gates. There's never been any kind of (racial) problem here."
The flag's future will be decided after the fair's annual stockholder's meeting in the fall, board president Gary Fleming Jr., told The Kansas City Star on Wednesday. Fleming did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press on Thursday. An email to the fair board also was not answered.
Carl Myers, a board member, said he told the board a month ago the flag should come down and "they all laughed." His brother, Keith Myers, a fair stockholder who is a photographer for The Star, said he brought the issue up at a meeting Sunday and was told the flag would stay. At a special meeting Tuesday, the board voted to keep the flag - but it was taken down Wednesday, the newspaper reported.
The fair, which calls itself the oldest continuously operating fair west of the Mississippi River, is a not-for-profit organization operated entirely by volunteers. It is run by about 100 stockholders, including 15 board members, and operates on fair proceeds and sponsorships, with no financial help from any government entity.
Davis said she voted to take the flag down out of concern that the fair's volunteers could be portrayed in a negative light.
"I was bothered by the possibility of people on the outside thinking that board members and stockholders are racist or bigoted and they aren't," she said. "I'm more concerned about how good people that I've known all my life would be portrayed in a bad way."
The Platte County Fair began in 1858. It was suspended in 1861 and 1862 during the Civil War, after Platte City was burned to the ground by Union soldiers in December 1861 and many men in the county were killed, according to a fair history on the organization's website. The fair resumed in 1863 and has operated since then.