Will Trump, Confederate flags return for Cruisin’? ‘I thought it was just about cars.’
Derrick Holloway saw the Trump 2020 and Confederate battle flags almost as soon as he got into town for Cruisin’ The Coast last year.
Driving in, he turned left off of U.S. 49 onto Beach Boulevard. Immediately, he saw trucks flying both flags, which he says go “hand in hand,” and more Trump flags for sale on the side of the road.
“Right there at the red light, it began there,” he said. “All the way up the doggone beach.”
Holloway, a car enthusiast and videographer who lives in New Orleans, said he has attended Cruisin’ for five years, and 2020 was the first time he had seen so many flags. He attributed it to the presidential election, which was held about a month after Cruisin’ 2020. And Mississippi’s retiring of the 1894 state flag with the Confederate battle flag emblem could also have made people “a little bit more rebellious,” he said.
This year, with the election over and the new Magnolia flag flying over Mississippi, he and other attendees and some Coast residents wonder if flags associated with right-wing political views will be back, perhaps becoming a permanent fixture of Cruisin’ in the age of Trump.
“It shouldn’t be a political thing,” he said of car culture and shows like Cruisin’. “And they’re making it political now. Society as a whole is becoming political. The country’s becoming divided.”
But not everyone paid attention to the flags last year.
“I did not notice anything that was to me unusual about any kind of flags,” said Woody Bailey, the event’s executive director. “I don’t really concentrate on the flags. I’m concentrating on running the event.”
Cruisin’ and Confederate symbols
Established in 1996, the growth of Cruisin’ has coincided with a national debate over the proper place of Confederate symbols in American public life.
That debate heated up after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed a Black man named George Floyd, sparking some of the largest protests in American history.
The Mississippi Legislature voted to retire the 1894 state flag in June. Later that summer in Gulfport, protesters, counter-protesters and white nationalist militia members wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying guns clashed during a demonstration asking Harrison County supervisors to remove the Confederate monument from courthouse grounds.
By the time Cruisin’ arrived in October, groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans had launched an initiative to build new monuments and gather public support for their cause.
But Confederate flags on trailers and at camp sites have been part of the event for years.
“I’ve never seen so many RVs & confederate flags in my life...Ugh,” one reviewer wrote on Yelp in 2015. She gave Cruisin’ two stars.
Some observers have pointed to the disparate receptions of Cruisin’ and Black Spring Break as an indication of racial injustice on the Coast.
Jesmyn Ward, DeLisle native, two-time National Book Award winner and current Mississippi resident, wrote about them in an essay collection for the American Civil Liberties Union last year.
“This is the kind of place where Cruisin’ the Coast, a gathering of mostly white, older people who tool around the different small towns of the Gulf Coast in restored antique cars, produces just as much, if not more, traffic and congestion business as Black Spring Break in Biloxi, and while Cruisin’ the Coast is celebrated, Black Spring Break is heavily policed, restricted, and the outcry to cease the event increases every year,” she wrote.
‘I thought it was just about cars’
Charlene Brown drove down from Jackson to attend her first Cruisin’ The Coast last year. She had a great time checking out the cars, meeting new people, and eating at restaurants on Beach Boulevard.
But the Trump and Confederate flags she saw as soon as she arrived took her by surprise.
“I just didn’t know it was gonna be political,” she said. “I thought it was just about cars.”
To Brown, who is Black and has lived in Mississippi all her life, the Confederate flag carries “so much history.”
“It just reminds me of history,” she said. “So much stuff happened under the flag. Racial killings. Hatred. Hatred.”
All her interactions during Cruisin’ were positive, she said, and she didn’t avoid anyone because of whatever flag they might have been flying. But she thinks the leadership of Cruisin’ could make a point of reminding people that it’s a car show, not a political rally.
“You don’t want to try to offend your neighbor,” she said. “You don’t want to offend your visitors.”
Bailey said that political campaigning is not allowed at Cruisin’ events. But there are no restrictions or suggestions for flags.
American flags only?
Coast resident Mary Heidingsfelder commented in a Cruisin’ The Coast Facebook group with about 25,000 people that there’s only one flag she hopes to see this year.
“It would be nice to just see all American flags and nothing else,” she wrote. “No Trump, No Biden, no BLM, no Confederate flags. It’s time for us to unite and find similarities and not display divisive symbols.”
By Monday afternoon, a drive down U.S. 90 from Biloxi to Gulfport showed American flags out in full force.
“It’s to represent the country,” said Ryan Cartee, who was sitting with his mom outside a friend’s trailer flying the American flag near Biloxi. The 39-year-old hasn’t missed a single Cruisin’, except the year it didn’t happen after Katrina.
But there were also plenty of Trump flags, Gadsen flags, and a smaller number of Confederate and 1894 state flags, too. Just east of Beauvoir, one flag waved high above a collection of RVs.
“Joe Biden Sucks,” it read.
‘Everybody’s still flying the Trump flag’
Tonya Wagner and her husband Joe have thrown a week-long party for Cruisin’ every year, leasing land and inviting friends to join them with their own RVs and classic cars. Tonya Wagner cooks for the whole group every night — gumbo, spaghetti, boiled shrimp — and they share the meal under a big tent.
The front of the tent is decorated with a Confederate battle flag, an 1894 state flag, a U.S. flag and a P.O.W flag that belongs to a friend who served in Vietnam.
“My husband doesn’t like our flag change, as you can tell,” she said.
Wagner said she doesn’t mind the new flag, though she thinks it’s “ludicrous” that anyone was offended by the old one.
Last year, the tent display included a Trump flag as well.
“It’s just voicing your opinions,” Wagner said.
Not far from Big Play, Marta Morrell and her friends had set up their RVs for her 16th year of Cruisin’. In front of their tent facing Beach Boulevard, they had raised an American flag, a Trump 2024 flag, a flag supporting veterans, and a Blue Lives Matter flag.
As people drive by, the flag display elicits thumbs up and approving honks.
Over the years, Morrell said, she’s seen more and more flags at Cruisin’.
“I think people are waking up,” she said. “America needs to wake up. This is our country.”
And when it came to Trump, it didn’t matter that 2021 isn’t an election year.
“Everybody’s still flying the Trump flag,” she said.
Brown is looking forward to returning to the Coast for Cruisin’ this year. It’ll be her vacation from her job at a hospital. But for her, the Trump flags will carry a different meaning now.
“It’s not election time,” she said. “Now this time if you doing it, you’re just trying to get a rise out of someone.”
Holloway, who tries to document all aspects of car culture, said he made a point of capturing footage of the Confederate flags last year. And he plans to do it again this year.
“That flag does not 100% signify patriotism,” said Holloway, who is Black.
At car shows around the country, Holloway has rarely seen flags associated with politics. Except at Cruisin’.
“Why do you have to make it political, if it’s about cars and people coming together and having a great time?” he said.
This story was originally published October 5, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
