Johns Hopkins University Pulls Up the Welcome Mat for Confederate Groups

For the past 20 years the Maryland chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans have held a rally and march in Baltimore’s Wyman Park. Scores of people, some of whom are dressed in Confederate Army uniforms, sing Dixie. Wreaths are placed at the foot of monuments dedicated to Confederate heroes. Every year after the rally, members of the two groups went across the street to a reception in a building on the campus of Johns Hopkins University.

Not anymore.

The university told the two groups that they would no longer rent them a space for their reception. “We choose not to have the Confederate battle flag carried across our campus,” said a university spokesman. Particularly offensive to the university was the fact that the rally was scheduled in the same week as the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and just days before Barack Obama’s inauguration as the nation’s first black president.