Posted on July 8, 2015

House Moves to Ban Confederate Flag in Federal Cemeteries

Andrew Taylor, ABC News, July 8, 2015

The House has voted to ban the display of Confederate flags at historic federal cemeteries in the deep South.

The low-profile move came Tuesday evening after a brief debate on a measure funding the National Park Service, which maintains 14 national cemeteries, most of which contain graves of Civil War soldiers.

The proposal by Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., added language to block the Park Service from allowing private groups to decorate the graves of southern soldiers with Confederate flags in states that commemorate Confederate Memorial Day. The cemeteries affected are the Andersonville and Vicksburg cemeteries in Georgia and Mississippi.

{snip}

The flag ban was adopted by a voice vote. The Park Service funding bill is scheduled for a vote on Thursday.

{snip}

But House leaders have deferred action on a plan by Bennie Thompson, a black Democrat from Mississippi, to ban Confederate images such as that contained in the Mississippi flag from being displayed in the House complex. Numerous statues of Confederate figures such as Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, are also on display in the Capitol.