A famous Glasgow country music club has voted to ban the Confederate flag.
Committee members of the Grand Ole Opry in Govan Road voted on Monday night (November 27) to stop displaying the controversial US flag, which is viewed as both a racist white supremacist symbol and an emblem for the American south.
The ban was upheld by 50 votes to 48, the BBC reports, at an emergency general meeting of committee members.
Read more: Tory MSP under fire for Confederate flag tweet about Scottish Greens
It comes after the flag was removed at the venue last month, after officials said it had caused offence to visitors and created "disturbances".
In a statement on the Grand Ole Opry's website, it said the original decision to remove it was taken by a "minority" of committee members, "without a quorum, and without consulting Opry members".
The Grand Ole Opry, which is considered the biggest country music club in Scotland, today confirmed the flag is no longer on display. Organisers have been contacted for further comment.
Why is the Confederate flag controversial? History of flag
The Confederate flag originates in the US Civil War in the 1860s, where it was used by Southern slave-owning states.
Also known as the Southern Cross, it has a blue St Andrew's cross on a red background, with white stars on the cross representing each Confederate state.
The South lost the Civil War, and the United States ended slavery and began to introduce civil rights for black citizens.
However, many southerners believed they fought to defend their rights and way of life against northern interference, and the flag has become a symbol of that mythology.
The Confederate flag was used by the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate black people and call for racial segregation across the south throughout the 20th Century.
When has the Confederate flag caused controversy recently?
To the present day, the flag has been associated with white supremacy.
It was used by Dylann Roof, who massacred nine black people in a Charleston church in 2015. Roof said he had wanted to bring back segregation or start a race war, and posed for photos holding the Confederate flag.
The flag was also waved by white nationalists during a rally in Charlottesville, which saw avowed neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr plough his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer.
And the Confederate flag was also brandished by a mob of far-right Donald Trump supporters who stormed the US capitol building in Washington DC on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overturn the election of President Joe Biden.
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