PHOTOS: Protesters Welcome Obama To Oklahoma With Confederate Flags

People wave Confederate flags outside the hotel that President Barack Obama is staying the night, on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Oklahoma City. Obama is traveling in Oklahoma to visit El Reno Federal Correctional I... People wave Confederate flags outside the hotel that President Barack Obama is staying the night, on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Oklahoma City. Obama is traveling in Oklahoma to visit El Reno Federal Correctional Institution. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) MORE LESS
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Supporters of the Confederate flag rallied Wednesday in Oklahoma as President Barack Obama arrived in the state for a series of events, including the first ever visit to a federal prison by a sitting President.

About 10 people waving Confederate battle flags were among the crowd that gathered Wednesday night outside the Oklahoma City hotel where Obama was expected to stay, according to a White House pool report. One person waved an American flag and another held up a pro-Obama sign, the report noted.

Protesters also gathered earlier in the day near Durant, Oklahoma before Obama arrived at a local high school to deliver remarks on a program expanding high-speed Internet access, according to local TV station KFOR.


Confederate flag supporters fly their flags across the street from Durant High School. (AP)

“We’re not gonna stand down from our heritage. You know, this flag’s not racist. And I know a lot of people think it is, but it’s really not,” one protester who said he drove up from Texas, Trey Johnson, told the news station. “It’s just a southern thing, that’s it.”

Obama praised the removal of the Confederate battle flag from state Capitol grounds last week in South Carolina:

A debate over the flag’s place in public spaces has raged across southern states in the weeks since a man with white supremacist leanings allegedly massacred nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. The issue also reached Capitol Hill last week, where House Republicans scrapped a vote on an environmental spending bill in order to avoid debating the Confederate flag.

This post has been updated.

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