A picture emerged late Oct. 22 showing Stacey Abrams, the Democrat gubernatorial candidate for Georgia, burning the state’s flag during a protest.
Abrams admitted to burning the flag on the steps of the state’s Capitol in June 1992.
She was a freshman at Atlanta’s Spelman College at the time of the protest, which organizers described as protesting to “overcome racially divisive issues.”
The photo was published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We’re going to send Georgia’s racist past up in Flames,” another student at the protest then told the outlet. “Today we fight fire with fire. Burn, baby, burn!”
Abrams campaign sent a statement to the New York Times defending the flag burning.
“During Stacey Abrams’ college years, Georgia was at a crossroads, struggling with how to overcome racially divisive issues, including symbols of the Confederacy, the sharpest of which was the inclusion of the Confederate emblem in the Georgia state flag,” the statement read. “This conversation was sweeping across Georgia as numerous organizations, prominent leaders, and students engaged in the ultimately successful effort to change the flag.”
Georgia’s previous flag included Confederate battle flag symbols, as it was one of the Confederate states before the Civil War. The state adopted a new flag without the symbols in 2003.
Abrams’ opponent Brain Kemp didn’t respond to the news but has sought to portray Abrams as “too extreme for Georgia,” noting that Abrams headlined an event in 2011 for the Democratic Socialists of America. The pair is scheduled to debate on Oct. 23.
Confederate Symbols
Abrams has advocated for removing a massive cliff-side carving on Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, that ranks as the largest Confederate monument in the nation.
“My belief is the state should never fund monuments to domestic terrorism. They have to be put in context,” she told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
Abrams said in a series of tweets in 2017 that “Confederate monuments belong in museums where we can study and reflect on that terrible history, not in places of honor across our state.”
But others have defended the memorial, such as current Governor Nathan Deal.
“Stone Mountain is set up and preserved by state law as a Confederate memorial. In fact, the law that changed the state flag expressly prohibited any changes at Stone Mountain Park. Many on both sides of the argument have said that these Confederate symbols belong in places where we view historical artifacts, such as museums,” Deal’s office said in a statement sent to Fox 5.
“In Georgia, where these symbols are no longer on our state flag or on Capitol grounds, Stone Mountain serves that purpose.”
Experts told the broadcaster it would cost millions of dollars to alter or move the carving. Abrams suggested the funds could be crowdsourced.
Kemp said in a statement that he would “protect Stone Mountain and historical monuments in Georgia from the radical left.”
“We should learn from the past—not attempt to re-write it,” he added.
