Requests for Confederate flags up as banner comes under fire

Tuesday, February 15th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

(Greenville, South Carolina-AP) -- Confederate flag supporters are flooding the Legislature in South Carolina with requests for flags flown above the Statehouse. The requests come as support grows for removing the banner from atop the dome.

In the last five months of 1999, South Carolinians requested about 15-hundred Confederate flags from the Legislature. That's more than triple the number ordered in the 12 months before that. Budget and Control Board spokesman Michael Sponhour -- whose agency is responsible for raising the flags -- says the flags that are certified as having flown over the Statehouse do not fly over the dome but are run up an auxiliary flagpole on the building.

Constituents pay 20 dollars a piece for them. Flags that fly over the Statehouse dome are replaced only for wear and tear, and have a separate waiting list that stretches to years rather than weeks. The next-in-line to get a worn Confederate banner that has flown over the dome asked for it October Sixth, 1988.