Crestview decides not to rush into a decision
Since the Florida confederates surrendered to Union Brigadier General McCook on 10 May 1865 in Tallahassee, you might wonder why that old confederate rally flag is still flying in Crestview
Is news just slow to travel? Do folk in Crestview simply hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest?
And hasn't Crestview always had a confederate park adorned merrily by a confederate rally flag?
That last question is easy to answer: the Crestview Lions Club established Confederate Park in 1958, after the 1957 death of a lovable old local character, William Allen "Uncle Bill" Lundy, known to family and friends as "Florida's last confederate veteran"
In the 1930 census, Uncle Bill reported his birth year as 1858, which would have made him six or seven at the end of the war. But applying for a Florida pension as a confederate veteran a decade later in 1941, Uncle Bill gave his birth-year as 1848 -- which would have made him about 109 when he died -- and said he had enlisted in Alabama's Home Guard in 1864. Records of his confederate service seem never to have been found, but the Florida legislature nevertheless did award him a confederate pension for his alleged service in Alabama
Mere sentimental desire to remember colorful Uncle Bill may not have been the only motivation of the Crestview Lions Club for establishing a confederate park: demands for change in Jim Crow Florida were increasing after WWII, and they were meeting resistance
Civil rights activist Harry Moore and his wife Harritte had died in 1951 when their house in Mims was bombed on Christmas
Many school districts in Florida simply ignored the 1954 Brown v Topeka ruling and the subsequent 1955 Brown II: Orange County School Superintendent, Judson B. Walker, claims the county's residents are satisfied with the current system. Walker describes the attitude of the black community as "cooperative and happy" because black educational facilities are excellent and blacks express "a preference to attend their own schools"
There was a resurgence of klan activity
And a bus boycott began in Tallahassee after 1956 arrests for refusal to accept segregated seating
In 1958, the Florida legislature changed state law to allow local school boards to close schools if federal troops were brought to maintain order and further made segregated transport the law (pdf)
So Crestview's Confederate Park, ostensibly a memorial to old Uncle Bill, may simply be another Jim-Crow-era monument to white supremacy
In Crestview, the city lowered the confederate rally flag at the park on Wednesday, 8 July 2015, and replaced it with an American flag
The confederates promptly complained and the city restored the rally flag on 28 July
A final decision by the council, on whether to continue flying the flag, has been postponed to 14 September