Louisiana: Court to hear Confederate flag case

SHREVEPORT, La. (AP) -- A Confederate flag flying near the Caddo Parish Courthouse, 150 years after the start of the Civil War, will be an issue in a state Supreme Court hearing on Monday in the case of a black man sentenced to death in 2009 for killing a white firefighter. The flag flies at a monument -- statues of four Confederate officers and a flag -- that was erected in 1902 on a small piece of land that Caddo Parish donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The organization says the flag honors Southern heritage and is not a symbol of racism. The American Civil Liberties Union will argue that the flag should be removed. "We will be arguing, along with Mr. Dorsey's attorneys on May 9 in the Louisiana Supreme Court that the flag presents an intolerable risk that African-Americans may be intimidated to serve on juries, may be excluded from juries like Mr. Staples for having strong feelings about the flag," says ACLU attorney Anna Arceneaux said. On Tuesday, the NAACP led a protest against the flag. Protester Carl Staples said he was dismissed from Dorsey's jury pool in 2009 for expressing concerns about the flag. "This is where justice is made available to everybody. Yet we see in the 21st century, in the year 2011 there are still reminders of a vicious, ugly, degrading, racist, and incomprehensible past," said professor Charles Ogletree, director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School. "That's not equal protection. That is offensive, derogatory, and demeaning to a whole generation of people," he said. Chuck McMichael, with the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the flag represents "men who answered the call of their state to protect their state from a hostile army," not racism. "Some people have incorrectly used it that way," he said. Published: Thu, May 5, 2011