Weather permitting.
Currently the forecast is for precipitation in downtown Fort Worth tomorrow, possibly in the form of snow.
In the past week, or so, it became known that the infamous Confederate Battle Flag of recent extreme controversy, due to that flag's racist reputation, would not be allowed in tomorrow's parade.
The Confederate Battle Flag banishment has upset a group of what are known as Confederate Flaggers, led by Festus Allcock. I blogged about this in a blogging titled Festus Allcock Leads Confederate Battle Flag Charge During Fort Worth Stock Show Parade.
This morning I looked at the photos I took the last time I watched the Fort Worth Stock Show Parade to see if the notorious Confederate Battle Flag was parading that day.
Well, looking at the photo above it does appear that the Confederate Battle Flag was being carried in that particular iteration of the Stock Show Parade, carried by a marching group of Confederate Rebel Re-Enactors.
Another group of Confederate Rebel Re-Enactors, with this group on horseback, also carried Confederate flags, but not the notorious Confederate Battle Flag.
I do not think anyone could logically accuse the above parading group of Confederate Rebel Re-Enactors to be racists, as it appears that at least one of those riding with the group is of African-American descent, though not in uniform
The Yankee Union Re-Enactors also paraded on horseback, sans, it appears, the Union flag.
I am sort of the opinion that much too big a deal has been made over the Confederate Battle Flag, and Confederate Memorials of the statue sort.
My ancestors arrived in America several decades after the Civil War, eventually settling in part of America, Washington, which was not yet part of the Union during the Civil War. So, I am not a Yankee.
When I drove down to Texas, back in May of 1998, to see if it was a place I might want to move to, I recollect driving west to Weatherford, walking around the Parker County Courthouse, impressed by the courthouse square where I came upon something I had never seen before.
A Confederate War Memorial.
Til that moment it had not dawned on my that I was in the Confederacy, in the South, in Rebel territory.
Since seeing that first Confederate War Memorial I have seen many more, like the big Dallas Confederate Memorial at Pioneer Cemetery by Pioneer Plaza, with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis depicted.
I am not onboard with those who see these historical memorials as being racist symbols in need of eradicating.
I am onboard with those who want to eradicate the Confederate Battle Flag when the Confederate Battle Flag is used as a racist symbol of hate.
I don't know if Festus Allcock uses the Confederate Battle Flag as some sort of racist badge of idiocy, or if Festus Allcock and his Confederate Flaggers simply see the Confederate Battle Flag as a historical relic.
However, that Confederate Battle Flag has, for many reasons, come to represent something very ugly that the majority of Americans object to.
And so, methinks it would behoove Festus Allcock and his fellow Confederate Flaggers to join the rest of the world in relegating that flag to fading memory and no longer wave it in people's faces.
Not in parades, not on flag poles. No where.....
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