NEWTON – The Catawba County NAACP met with the Sons of Confederate Veterans late Sunday afternoon to discuss the Confederate flag and its use in the Soldiers Reunion Parade in Newton.

Jerry McCombs, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter president, invited the group, which carries the Confederate flag in the parade, to discuss the flag’s meaning.

The idea was to come to a consensus of what the flag represented, McCombs said.

“Preferably, we’ll all be on the same page,” he said before the meeting.

McCombs also invited the Newton Merchant’s Association, a parade sponsor, by way of a letter to former chair Wayne Dellinger in December.

McCombs said he received no response, but did not try to contact them in any other way. No representative from the NMA attended the meeting.

For more than an hour, the two sides argued vehemently, yet mostly amiably. They did so inside the nave of St. Paul United Methodist Church before an audience of 30 to 40 people, including SCV and NAACP members.

In opening statements, McCombs and Pastor Vincent Ross of Maiden Chapel Baptist Church argued the flag represented a symbol of suppression and mistreatment of African-Americans.

Both McCombs and Ross said they do not argue to have it banned everywhere and that people have a right to display it on private property. But because the parade represents the entire community, including African-Americans within that community, the flag has no place there.

“What we would like to happen is you would be sensitive to the perception of the African-American community when it comes to public events or things that represent all people,” Ross said.

“There should be respect for that.”

After the meeting, Ross recognized the impasse between the two sides as a lack of understanding.

“I don’t think that they understand the disrespect that the flag (represents),” Ross said. “I think they have good intentions. I don’t think their intention is motivated by racism. But the impact the flag has on our community, it still exists and it will always exist and nothing will change that.”

Mark Nixon and Bill Starnes of the SCV argued the flag does not represent those things.

Starnes said he came to the meeting because he was hopeful at the idea of starting a dialogue. He said the perception of the flag McCombs and Ross hold is a “false perception based on false history.”

Starnes denies that Confederate soldiers fought to perpetuate slavery.

To him, the flag represents courage, valor and honor, he said.

“A devotion to duty, a devotion to home,” he continued. “Not about slavery at all. To me, that flag represents our right to self-government.”

Starnes said he understood how McCombs and Ross view the flag, but that he does not see it as a reason for its exclusion from the parade.

“To me, that would be giving in to a false history,” he said. “That would be like saying, ‘I know I’m right, but I want to give in to the lies and the misconceptions.’”

Not surprisingly, the sides did not agree on a common definition for the flag, but said the meeting was still useful.

“I thought it was helpful to be able to have an honest dialogue, to talk,” Ross said.

For that reason, he was glad he came.

Ross understands that the flag means something different than hate to the SCV.

“But that doesn’t change the perspective that we have of it,” he said.

Looking ahead, Ross still has hope for a future agreement.

“Hopefully we will get them to understand how serious we are about it,” Ross said. “And hopefully they will someday understand the offense that it is.”

McCombs said this meeting was a single step in what he views as a process. He said the Catawba County NAACP chapter will announce upcoming plans Jan. 18, which is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

At the end, Pastor Willetta Ar-Rahmaan of St. Paul offered a prayer.

“Let us pray,” she said. “Lord God, we just say thank you that we were able to have a conversation that may have never been able to have 50 years ago.”

NAACP hosts Sons of Confederate Veterans at Sunday meeting