Fremont man takes pride in flying Confederate flag

FREMONT – After his favorite Confederate battle flag was stolen recently, a Fremont man bought another to fly on the front porch of his South Wood Street home.

Don Huffman, born and raised in Fremont, developed a love for the Confederate flag when he lived in Monks Corner, South Carolina, working with his father at a Navy shipyard.

“I’ve lived in Fremont for about 20 years. I’ve always flown the Confederate flag,” he said. “About a week ago, somebody came through in the middle of the night, ripped it down. Now I just fly it during the day.”

Huffman said that he has lived at his Wood Street home for eight years and that he never had a negative comment from anyone in the neighborhood or anyone passing by. After the flag was stolen, in fact, he said, his neighbors on nearby South Street encouraged him to get another one and fly it again.

“People love that I’m flying it. A lot of people associate the flag with racism because of the Civil War. They think we were fighting to keep slavery. We weren’t,” he said. “We didn’t want to be governed.”

Flying the Confederate flag brings a sense of pride, Huffman said, and he is adamant that the flag has nothing to do with race or racism. Although racial concerns were cited in South Carolina’s decision to remove the Confederate flag from its capitol grounds, Huffman said, he flies the flag because he is a “rebel” and considers the flag to be a rebel symbol.

“I do things my way,” Huffman said. “In the South, we have great hospitality, great food, and we don’t like people telling us what to do. It’s just Southern pride.”

Fremont resident John Lewis III, however, sees the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred. Lewis said the church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, is an example of the hatred the flag represents.

“I think he’s making a statement that he believes in that (church shooting),” Lewis said of Huffman’s decision to fly the flag.

Despite racial tensions across the country, Huffman said, he has no plans to remove the flag from his house.

“I will fly it until they outlaw it or I am dead,” he said.

Huffman said the flag is viewed differently by Southerners compared with people living in the North, where he thinks there is more insensitivity about what the flag stands for.

“You don’t mess with the flag down there,” Huffman said of the southern states. “You’ve got those that will just stomp a mudhole in you for flying it (in the North). But down there, it’s different.

“A lot of people view it as a racist flag. But if people sit down and do their history lessons, you’d find that it’s not,” he said. “The red in the flag stands for Christ’s blood. There’s a lot to the flag.”

Lewis said Huffman’s display of the Stars and Bars leaves a “bitter taste in my mouth,” but he acknowledged that Huffman and all other Americans have the freedom to fly the flag.

cshoup@gannett.com

419-334-1035

Twitter: @CraigShoupNH