WELLINGTON, Ohio — A group of people took to the streets Tuesday to protest the sale and display of the Confederate flag at the Lorain County Fair this summer.
Several anti-Confederate flag groups gathered to form a caravan of protesters.
“The Confederacy lost the war. Ohio lost the largest number of soldiers in that conflict between the states so that the flag back then was about racists and racism and maintaining slavery. The flag now is a representative of the white supremacists and neo Nazis that want to … keep races apart and that as no place a county fair,” said Jeanine Donaldson of the Fair Minded Coalition of Lorain County, who has protested the sale for years. “And together we are going to insist that the Lorain County Fair Board ban the sale of the Confederate flag at our Lorain County fair.”
The caravan protest drove through several small towns like Oberlin, spreading their message.
“Any Confederacy memorabilia, it stands for slavery. That’s what the Confederacy fought for five years, and then they lost in the Civil War,” said Rep. Juanita Brent of District 12.
Brent proposed legislation against the flag last month but was defeated in the Ohio House. The Ohio State Fair in Columbus has already banned the sale of the Confederate flag but that event has been canceled because of the pandemic.
“The caravan is so necessary. It’s letting people know that in 2020, everyone wants to feel like they belong particularly when they go to the county fair. No one should feel like they are experiencing hatred, feeling like they don’t belong, and no one should be reminded about slavery. And that’s what the flag does – it reminds people about slavery.
Mercy Health and Meijer have chosen to end their sponsorship of the Lorain County Fair, pulling their support over selling the flag. The Fair Minded Coalition has been in communications with fair sponsors, encouraging them to reconsider.
“You know, they say, ‘All is fair in love and war.’ I don’t like to use those militaristic terms, but I think we just found like-minded sponsors, and once they understood what the fair board was doing, they understood they wanted to be on the right side of history when it comes to having that flag banned at the fair,” said Donaldson.
