Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 23, 1993                   TAG: 9307230196
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SENATE REJECTS CONFEDERATE FLAG

Helms, the 20-year North Carolina Republican, had sought - and seemed to be finding - a roundabout way to preserve the design patent held by United Daughters of the Confederacy on a symbol that includes the flag.

He proposed language to that effect as an amendment to the national service bill, which would provide educational grants in return of various forms of service. With many senators unaware of what they were voting on, he won a test vote, 52-48.

Then Moseley-Braun, a Democrat from Illinois, angrily took the floor. Shouting and crying, she told the Senate:

"On this issue there can be no consensus. It is an outrage. It is an insult. It is absolutely unacceptable to me and to millions of Americans, black or white, that we would put the imprimatur of the United States Senate on a symbol of this kind of idea."

As word of the debate spread through Senate offices, more and more senators came to the floor, most taking her side. Some disagreed, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., who said "the Civil War is history." And Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., insisted "the Confederacy is a part of American history."

But they lost. The Senate was convinced by the argument that the flag was an insulting reminder of slavery and killed the Helms amendment, 75-25, as 27 senators changed their votes over a three-hour period.

Design patents like the Daughters of the Confederacy logo come up for renewal every 14 years. Most patents are simply allowed to lapse. But the Daughters of the Confederacy have gone to Congress for renewal four times this century. Renewal by Congress confers honor and prestige for certain patriotic groups. Only about 10 groups have won patents from Congress since 1900.

Helms angrily insisted that his proposal had nothing to do with race or with slavery. "Race should never have been introduced," he said. "It is a political ploy."

He maintained that the symbol, a laurel wreath encircling the national flag of the Confederacy - not the battle flag or stars and bars - was instead just a proud insignia of a charitable group of "about 24,000 ladies of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, most of them elderly, all of them gentle souls who meet together and work together as unpaid volunteers at veterans hospitals."

He said a decision of the Judiciary Committee on May 6 not to renew the patent on the organization's design must have been "a misunderstanding."

The first vote went ahead, as senators dashed in from lunch and hurried off to committee meetings.

Then Moseley-Braun returned to the attack, angrily: "This flag is the real flag of the Confederacy."

She said it symbolized the Civil War, "fought to try to preserve our nation, to keep the states from separating themselves over the issue of whether or not my ancestors could be held as property, as chattel, as objects of trade and commerce in this country."

She said: "This is no small matter. This is not a matter of little old ladies walking around doing good deeds. There is no reason why these little old ladies cannot do good deeds anyway. If they choose to wave the Confederate flag, that certainly is their right."

But, she said, a flag that symbolized slavery should not be "underwritten, underscored, adopted, approved by this United States Senate."

Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, D-Colo., the freshman who is the Senate's only other non-white, scoffed at Helms and others who defended the flag as showing respect to tradition: "I would point out to them, that slavery was once a tradition, like killing Indians like animals was once a tradition."

One voice of tradition, Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama, said his family was "rooted in the Confederacy." One grandfather had signed the Ordinance of Secession and another had served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army.

He said he thought they "might be spinning in their graves," but he would reverse himself and vote against the flag, because "we live today in a different world. . . . We must get racism behind us. We must move forward. We must realize we live in America today."