A Confederate flag was taken down in the middle of the night in Virginia in what the Culpeper County Sheriff's Office calls a case of vandalism. Four men hoisted a new Confederate flag in its place Friday.
Someone knocked down a huge flag pole and removed the Confederate flag from the ropes that were tethering it next to Lenn Park, a park operated by the county on land donated by three brothers in the Lenn family. The park sits on land near the site of the 1863 Battle of Brandy Station between Union and Confederate soldiers.
The flag has been of interest for quite some time because it flew over a public park and playground. In 2015, after the mass shooting in Charleston, the county said it gave the small parcel of land over which the flag flew back to its original private owners.
Calls to remove the flag continued.
Some residents say if the government had acted more transparently, it wouldn’t have taken a middle of the night removal to get the flag down.
“If you don’t want to have these types of results, then it’s time to have an open conversation, have an open dialog and be truthful to one another and listen to where everyone stands,” Pastor Adrian Sledge said. “This way you don’t have these type of situations where people are vandalizing property.
Four men raised a new Confederate flag on the pole next to the one that was toppled. They said they did so because of the battle flag's important history.
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