Fort Smith City Administrator Carl Geffken said the flags representing the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard will fly next to the United States flag at the park.
The action follows a May 19 request from Fort Smith attorney Joey McCutchen to oblige the Arkansas State Capitol and Historical Monument Protection Act (Senate Bill 553, now Act 1003 of 2021) and replace the flags that flew at Riverfront Park from October 2001 to April 2020. Those flags represented nations once in control of land now known as Arkansas: France, the United States of America, and the Confederate States of America.
A May 25 letter to Geffken from Colby Roe of Daily & Woods law firm in Fort Smith states that after review of the Arkansas State Capitol and Historical Monument Protection Act there are “serious doubts as to whether the Riverfront Park flag display would be characterized as a ‘historical monument’ under the Act.”
Although city administration claims that the flags were taken down “due to age and condition,” it is largely understood that the flags were in fact removed due to the existence of slavery in Royal France, Spain, and the Confederacy. Displaying the flags of those governments is no longer Politically Correct, and so their flags must be replaced by the flags of institutions such as the US Navy, which once defended the international slave trade at sea, and the US Army, which once secured the rights of slaveowners here on the homefront.