But there were plenty of African-Americans among the throngs at the fair.
It is also in the midst of rolling farm country where red-state values hold strong, in a region that is predominantly white. The fair is set on the outskirts of a liberal, artsy college town, barely 75 miles from Manhattan, in a county that is home to Woodstock and a summer magnet for downstaters. (Other vendors said sales of flag merchandise were unchanged.)
If anything, some said, as the authorities crack down on the flag, demand for it has spiked, out of a spirit of rebellion cut from the same cloth as the flag itself. But after a local reporter pointed out that flag merchandise was being sold openly, organizers hastily issued a directive to “discreetly display any items that may offend fairgoers.”įor all that, though, vendors at the Ulster fair who sold flag-themed merchandise said they had not fielded many complaints. The New York State Fair, held at the end of this month, extracted promises from vendors not to sell anything with the flag on it.īut in Delaware County, next door to Ulster, a fair director incited a furor when he was asked to ban the flags and snapped, “The more of them, the better.”Īt the Ulster fair itself, the director initially said the flag was banned. The Otsego County Fair, which ended on Sunday, two counties northwest of Ulster, banned Confederate flag merchandise.
But local debates over flags have also sprung up this summer at fairs in at least eight states that fought on the Union side in the Civil War. This summer, though, the controversy swirling over the Confederate flag has headed north and paid a visit to the county fair.Īfter the June massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., and the photos that surfaced of the accused gunman posing with the flag, the flag was removed from the grounds of the South Carolina State House, and national retailers halted sales of it. Midsummer in the nation’s rural precincts means agricultural fairs and wholesome traditions: tractor pulls and funnel cakes, the scent of cut grass and horses, the clang of the strongman’s bell and the shriek of children on the Tilt-a-Whirl. Now, he said, manufacturers have stopped making the flag and he cannot get any more. “I sold out of them a month ago, in Syracuse,” said Ryan Powers, staffing the Titan Telescoping Flagpoles booth, amid stacks of American flags.