On June 26 the Gettysburg National Military Park bookstore announced they have removed items from shelves “featuring the Confederate flag” and will no longer sell such products.
CBS Philly reports the Gettysburg bookstore will continue to sell items that feature both the American and the Confederate flag, as long as the depiction is in proper “historical context,” but “will no longer sell items that use the battle flag as a stand-alone feature.”
The Gettysburg bookstore’s move is in response to a National Park Service request, wherein they asked “concessionaries” to quit selling the Confederate flag following the attack on Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina.
National Park Service director Jonathan B. Jarvis said in a statement according to The Hill, “As that discussion spread across the country, one of our largest cooperating associations, Eastern National, began to voluntarily remove from the park stores that it manages any items that depict a Confederate flag as its primary feature.”
“I’ve asked other cooperating associations, partners and concession providers to withdraw from sale items that solely depict a Confederate flag,” Jarvis continued.
A picture of the alleged gunman–Dylann Roof–posing by a license plate containing a Confederate flag launched a frenzied campaign to do away with Confederate flags on state capitol grounds and even Confederate memorials throughout the South. The move to banish the flag was complimented by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) call to remove a statue of Jefferson Davis from the Kentucky Capitol rotunda.
McConnell’s sentiments were echoed by Kentucky GOP gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin.
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