Thread: Relic Room cuts Confederate flag display by $1.7 million

The Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum Commission on Tuesday lowered to $3.6 million a proposal for displaying the Confederate battle flag that was removed from the State House grounds
in July.

The new proposal is about $1.7 million less than what a consultant proposed earlier this month. The new plan also reduces projected annual operating funds to $234,000 from the consultant’s proposed $416,000.

The commission voted unanimously to approve the plan, which includes opening a new wing at the Relic Room, which is located in the same renovated textile mill as the S.C. State Museum.

The proposal also includes an electronic presentation of the names of all 24,000 South Carolina Confederate soldiers killed in the Civil War and the conservation and display of period Confederate battle flags now in storage.

The war began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and was fought from 1861 to 1865.

Among items cut Tuesday from the initial $5.3 million proposal were:

▪ $700,000 to repair a leaky roof above a planned new entrance;

▪ $589,000 for converting a courtyard adjacent to the Congaree Room into a landscaped public space;

▪ $369,000 in construction costs and display features.

Commission Chairman George Dorn of Lexington County said the panel was trying to fulfill both the letter and the spirit of the resolution that removed the battle flag from a pole on the State House grounds adjacent to the Confederate soldier monument.

The flag was lowered following a contentious debate by the General Assembly after the murder of nine parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. An admitted white supremacist has been charged with the crimes.

Dorn noted the resolution calls for more than just the flag’s display. It also says the Relic Room “shall establish and maintain an appropriate, permanent, and public display honoring South Carolina soldiers killed during the Civil War to include (the flag removed from the State House grounds). This flag must be displayed alongside other distinguished military exhibits covering the Civil War.”

“We don’t have room to do an adequate and appropriate display according to the resolution,” Dorn said.

The Relic Room’s director, Allen Roberson, added that “just putting it in a box won’t settle a controversy that has gone on” since the flag was first flown on the State House dome in 1962. “We are the institution to resolve this.

And this is a solution to resolve the problem as best we can.”

Roberson said that without an expansion, an “appropriate display” that meets the resolution’s criteria would take up the Relic Room’s only programming space, threatening its income and accreditation. “We’re busting at the seams, space-wise,” he said.

Four of the commission’s seven current members attended Tuesday’s meeting.

The commission met for the first time in late November. The Relic Room, which has a staff of four full-time employees and an annual budget of $860,000, rushed to present a plan to the General Assembly by its mandated Jan. 1 deadline, Roberson said.

“We’re going to deliver this to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee by noon (Wednesday) before everyone leaves town for the holidays,” he said.

The plan – which would have to be approved and funded by the Legislature – would utilize a 4,600-square-foot second-story room directly above the Relic Room in the old textile mill on Gervais Street.

The use of the now-empty Congaree Room would increase the military museum’s size by about one third. Watson Tate Savory Architects Inc. of Columbia, along with British consultant Haley Sharpe Design, offered the first peek at the proposal earlier this month.

The plan approved Tuesday also calls for the entrance to the Relic Room to be expanded farther into the mill’s soaring atrium, making event space available and allowing for a new, direct stairway to the expansion.

The new room would also have classroom and event space.

State Rep. Chris Corley, R-Aiken, said the initial $5.3 million proposal was “irresponsible” in light of pressing repair needs from the October floods and the crumbling condition of the state’s roads.

The lower figure is “still too much,” Corley said Tuesday.

Corley said there’s another aspect of the flag display proposal that concerns him.

“This is a payoff,” he said. “This is just like 2000, when the flag came down and there was a payoff – that was the Hunley. You take the flag down and then all of a sudden you’re going to put this huge amount of money into the Confederate Relic Room.

It’s a trade-off and I do not like doing business like that.”

The H.L. Hunley was a Confederate submarine that sunk just outside Charleston Harbor in 1864. The state has helped pay for the submarine’s restoration.

Even the reduced price tag represents “an obscene amount of money,” Corley said. “This may blow everybody’s mind and throw everybody for a loop, but I am not voting for that much money to go into it.”

House Speaker Pro Tempore Tommy Pope, R-York, also noted there are many historical items in the Confederate Relic Room, some with greater historical value than others.

Pope said he supports honoring the heritage component of the entire Relic Room. “By the same token, we do have big needs in the state, and we need to move forward on those.”

The price tag concerns him, but Pope said he also wants to be fair. “Let’s honor it and move on,” he said.

Dorn, the commission chairman, said he understands the proposal will not please everyone. But, he added, it fulfills the letter and spirit of the compromise resolution that led to the flag being removed from the State House grounds.

”If you want to look at it globally, this is a work in progress,” he said. “I just want to get it delivered (to the General Assembly), let everyone enjoy the holidays and get into the process of deliberation.”

Read more here: Relic Room cuts Confederate flag display by $1.7 million | The Sun News

Museum seeks millions to show shelved Confederate flag

As it wrestles with preserving a symbol, South Carolina is finding that as icons are relegated to the dustbin of history, someone usually must decide how to manage the dustbin — and pay for it.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — After decades of debate in South Carolina over the Confederate battle flag, it seemed the matter had been settled in July, when state officials stopped flying the flag on State House grounds and relegated it to a museum for “appropriate display.”

Then came the price tag.

This month, consultants for the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia introduced a $5.3 million plan to expand the facility and show off the flag, along with an electronic display of the names of the state’s Civil War dead.

That idea proved to be a bust among Democrats who view the flag as an affront to African Americans, and among members of both parties who balked at the cost.

“Irresponsible,” said Rep. Mary Tinkler, a Democrat of Charleston.

“Absurd,” said Rep. Christopher Corley, a Republican of Graniteville.

“It wouldn’t have cost anything to keep it where it was,” said Rep. William Chumley, one of 20 Republicans in the South Carolina House, including Corley, who voted against moving the flag in the first place.

Last week, the commission that oversees the museum reduced the cost to $3.6 million. But the plan is subject to approval by the Legislature, and Tommy Pope, the House speaker pro tempore, said he expected a vigorous debate as his fellow Republicans sought to balance spending concerns with what he called the heritage that the flag represents.

The debate illustrates a challenge that communities around the country are facing as Americans embark on a reconsideration of public symbols and memorials that many now find offensive. As these icons are relegated to the dustbin of history, someone usually needs to figure out how to manage the dustbin — and pay for it.

For centuries, conquering armies, revolutionaries and liberated peoples have done no such thing, preferring to pull down, melt or dismember memorials to toppled governments. But other models have emerged to recognize history and preserve such memorials while not extolling the ideas they embody.

In Budapest, Hungary, a tourist attraction called Memento Park has collected dozens of Soviet-era monuments to Communist titans such as Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. “This park is about dictatorship,” the website quotes the park’s designer, architect Akos Eleod, as saying. “And at the same time, because it can be talked about, described and built up, this park is about democracy.”

Throughout the American South, similar strategies are emerging, particularly since the slayings of nine African-American parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in June prompted a movement to take down the symbols of the Confederacy. An avowed white supremacist is to stand trial in the shootings.

At the University of Texas, Austin, a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was removed from a prominent place near the landmark tower building in August. After refurbishing, the statue will be displayed in a new exhibit space dedicated to “the role of symbolism, statuary and public memory in American history,” said Don Carleton, executive director of the university’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

South Carolina’s Confederate and military museum dates to 1896; since 2001, it has been housed in a reconfigured textile mill a few blocks from the State House. The exhibits celebrate the state’s martial history and make some effort to contextualize the collection of old weapons, photographs and curiosities, though often with a distinctive Southern twist: One display refers to the Civil War as the “War between the States,” a name preferred by Confederate heritage groups.

The museum is also full of Confederate battle flags that were used by South Carolinians during the war — unlike the flag that was removed from the State House. That makes the whole issue of honoring the State House flag in the museum particularly absurd to critics like Brad Warthen, a former editorial-page editor at The State in Columbia, who now blogs about South Carolina politics.

Warthen has noted that legislators, years ago, mandated that the flag be made of nylon, rather than cotton, to keep the colors from fading. He ridiculed this as ahistorical and “cheesy.” (One of his old columns began with altered lyrics to the song “Dixie”: “Oh, I wish I was in the land of nylon.”)

Like many, Warthen believes that spending millions to display the flag makes little sense in a state that is struggling to find funds for road and infrastructure repairs (much needed after catastrophic flooding in October), educational initiatives and changes to a scandal-plagued Department of Social Services.

“Our state’s spending needs are legion,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter how you feel about the flag. It’s a ridiculous waste of resources.”

The flag is also likely to be a source of bad blood when the Legislature convenes in January. Tinkler, the Democratic lawmaker, has introduced a bill that would allow the museum display to be paid for with private funds and grants.

Corley, the Republican, has denounced the legislation that brought the flag down as a “backroom deal.” A Christmas card he sent to colleagues who supported the bill had a photo of the Confederate flag flying at the State House and a greeting that said, in part:
“May you take this joyous time as an opportunity to ask forgiveness of all your sins, such as betrayal.”

Museum seeks millions to show shelved Confederate flag | The Seattle Times