A war of words has been going on for almost two years as Sons of Confederate Veterans have taken issue with Williamson County’s proposal to remove the Confederate flag from the county seal. A vote by the Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) on the issue, which is required by law, had been delayed three times due to the showdown, but on Friday the THC voted unanimously to allow the county to alter the portion of the seal that contains an image of a Confederate flag draped over a cannon.
Sons of Confederate Veterans have been saying that that part of the seal is a memorial to the Battle of Franklin, and therefore falls under the protection of the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act, while the county has been saying that it does not.
The Tennessee Historical Commission’s Heritage Protection Act, which was approved in 2013, was created with the goal of protecting Confederate monuments and symbols. The Tennessee Heritage Protection Act states that it ensures “no memorial regarding a historic conflict, historic entity, historic event, historic figure, or historic organization that is, or is located on, public property, may be removed, renamed, relocated, altered, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed or altered.” However, the public entity “exercising control of a memorial may petition the commission for a waiver…A public entity shall petition the commission for a waiver prior to undertaking any action or transaction…that could foreseeably violate the restrictions imposed…”
Permission by the Tennessee Historical Commission to remove the Confederate flag on the Williamson County Seal was originally requested by Mayor Rogers Anderson in October 2020. The request came after a study completed by a task force put together by Williamson, Inc. stated that the flag on the seal could be detrimental to the economic development of the community after high feelings towards Southern Civil War imagery began with the Black Lives Matter movement. Sons of Confederate Veterans objected to the action and had the action blocked, as they are considered an interested party in the matter.
The Williamson County seal was adopted in 1968. According to the Williamson County website, “the upper left section depicts a flag and cannon, which symbolizes the rich history in the county. The upper right quadrant shows a school house illustrating the importance of education. The lower left portrays a bible in front of a church window, which represents religion. The lower right segment shows farm animals denoting agriculture.”
What brought about the original petition for change were the results of the task force report which took into consideration research on how Civil War symbols have impacted tourism and economic development in other Southern states, as well as responses from more than 800 citizens to a questionnaire regarding changing the design of the seal. They reported that cites like Jackson, Mississippi lost significant convention dollars due to their use of the Confederate symbol on their state flag. The task force feared the same thing could potentially happen in Williamson County if the flag is not removed.
After a two-and-a-half hour hearing, the THC commissioners voted 23-0 to accept the petition for declaratory order that was filed with the THC in November by Williamson County Attorney Jeff Mosley. The petition argued that altering of the county seal is not subject to the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act because it is not a memorial as defined by the THPA.
The SCV lawyer, H. Edward Phillips, had argued that it was a memorial, as that quadrant of the seal was designed to pay tribute to those who fell during the Battle of Franklin, and that removing it was destroying history.
“The question before the commission is not whether the Battle of Franklin was significant,” Mosley stated in his closing argument. “The question before the commission is not whether it was a historical event. The question before the commission is whether the county seal meets the definition of a memorial under the statute…”
In the end, it was decided that changing the seal was neither destroying history nor was it a memorial of the Battle of Franklin. Any appeals by the Sons of Confederate Veterans will have to go through the Davidson County Chancery Court.
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WHY? Just keep removing History, good, or bad its History
Just keep erasing History and the next generation will have nothing left to learn from.