When Walmart pulled all items bearing the Confederate flag from its store shelves in June, a spokesman for the retail giant said the action was necessary because of concerns that some customers would be offended by the symbol on merchandise.
The ensuing national controversy hit Russellville last month and left a Franklin County man offended at a Walmart employee’s refusal to make copies of his original drawing of the Confederate flag. When Norris Duncan went to the Russellville Walmart’s photo department earlier this month, he asked the clerk to scan and print several copies of his drawing that ran in the July 22, 2015 edition of the Franklin Free Press. The drawing depicted the Confederate flag with two skulls placed next to it.
Duncan, who said he’s had copies made of his drawings several times at the local Walmart, was shocked when the male employee told him company policy prohibited him from printing copies of anything denoting a Confederate flag.
“He said the reason he couldn’t do it is that the manager told them not to copy anything with the Confederate flag,” Duncan said. “So they refused to make my copies.”
In a June 22, 2015 statement, Walmart announced it would eliminate all products depicting the Confederate flag from store shelves nationally. The action came in the days following a shooter’s rampage at a historic African-American church in South Carolina that left nine people dead.
In July, an ice distributor in Iowa was told to change the logo on his ice bags or he would lose his business with Walmart. The company’s logo contained a cartoon character holding a Confederate flag. The company owner explained he earned the nickname ‘Poor Rebel’ while in the armed forces, and the logo was a caricature of that nickname.
Faced with losing one of his largest customers, the man changed his packaging for ice bags sold to Walmart.
Duncan said in his case he was not asking Walmart to ‘sell’ him anything, but rather he wanted photocopies of his drawing.
“It hurt me to think the way this country has gone over something like this,” Duncan said. “You can get a copy of the ISIL flag on a cake, or get a copy of something with the German swastika or a Japanese flag, but you can’t make a copy of the Confederate flag because this country has gone to the ‘hot place’ in a hand basket. That’s my saying.”
When a representative of the Franklin Free Press spoke by phone to a male employee in the Russellville Walmart photo department on August 25 and inquired whether he could get copies made of a Confederate flag drawing, the employee said no such copies could be made.
“I can not make copies of that, per company policy with Walmart, even if it’s your own drawing. Try CVS or Walgreen’s. We had to pull everything with Rebel flags on it,” the employee said.
Walmart officials did not respond to requests for comment from the Free Press for this article.
Walmart’s strict policy about the Confederate flag doesn’t seem to have permeated other local printers policies, though. Robert Mack Hester, owner of Hester Printing in Russellville, when presented with Duncan’s situation, said he would have made the copies.
“I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press. As long as it’s not hate speech, it would be okay,” Hester said.
