Black Lives Matter flag becomes issue in Florida community

black lives
The country’s racial divisions aren’t just flaring up in city streets.

As demonstrations against police brutality roiled the country earlier this year, Antoine Mickle began noticing the flags going up in his Jacksonville neighborhood declaring “Blue Lives Matter.”

For months, those flags hung from his neighbors’ homes.

But when Mickle decided to hang a flag of his own last month — proclaiming that “Black Lives Matter” — his neighborhood association immediately asked him to take it down, calling the flag ”noxious or offensive” under its rules.

If his neighbors could express their support for police, he said, he should be allowed to make a statement of his own.

“My life means something. My life matters. I’m a black man living in a white neighborhood,” Mickle said Wednesday, a day after he filed his lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville.

The country’s racial divisions aren’t just flaring up in city streets, government plazas and political discourse. They are also outside our front doors as disputes arise in some neighborhoods over waving the flag of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Homeowners associations can wield wide power over their communities — from preserving the architectural character of their neighborhoods to dictating paint colors and garden choices. Homeowners associations in Phoenix and Houston ordered residents to take down their flags.

But Mickle, who is Black, asserts that the association went too far when it went after his flag. He has no intention of taking it down, and asserts in his lawsuit that his civil rights were violated.

In a one-page letter, the homeowners association ordered Mickle to take down his flag within 24 hours.

“In order to comply with the Association’s governing documents, the Board of Directors requests that you take the following action: Remove the ‘Black Lives Matter’ flag.”

The president of the River Point Community Association, Shantell Hughes, declined to answer questions about the lawsuit, saying the matter has “been blown way out of proportion.”

Mickle’s attorney disagrees.

“When somebody suffers discrimination, you just can’t turn the page,” lawyer Matthew Dietz said. “He’s rightly concerned that it could happen in the future. The Blue Lives Matter flags hung for months at a time and they still remain. Those flags aren’t considered noxious by the officers of the association. They need to apply their rules equally.”

In an earlier statement sent to news outlets, Hughes said it was unfortunate that Mickle “took offense” to the association’s notice, which she called routine when rules violations occur.

In her statement, Hughes said the association does not intend to take any further action and considered the matter closed.

“The fact that it was a Black Lives Matter flag made no difference,” she said, adding that the flag violated association rules that require that flags be flown on a flagpole and that those flags commemorate holidays, sports teams or be seasonal in nature. The association said it does not prohibit political signs, as long as they be removed in a timely manner.

“Unfortunately, this is a politically charged time and the timing was ill-advised,” Hughes said in her statement. “We were obviously not thinking about that and just simply doing our job as we would have with any other type or flag or sign outside of the guideline.”

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Republished with permission of the Associated Press.

Bobby Caina Calvan

Bobby Caina Calvan is The Associated Press reporter in Tallahassee.


7 comments

  • S B ANTHONY

    November 25, 2020 at 6:21 pm

    That’s a great lawsuit. Ms. Hughes needs a reality check and also needs to know that lying is no longer the business of the day in America. A shameful HOA act.

  • Sonja Fitch

    November 26, 2020 at 4:52 am

    If the blue violated the code and were not cited and the black did the same and were cited, then it is racist and an arbitrary decisions!

  • Craig

    November 28, 2020 at 8:40 pm

    Take your Racist flag down and leave your “White neighborhood” . Head to Texas and turn left

  • Michael Ruggiero

    November 30, 2020 at 9:57 pm

    Racists, fascists, and republicans abound these days. They all need to be locked up in prison where they belong for the rest of their pathetic lives. Or better still, deported to Russia.

    And for the record, black lives do matter. Blue ones who murder and abuse people do not matter at all.

  • Dennis P Lewis

    December 4, 2020 at 7:40 pm

    “BURN” the “BLM COMMUNISM” flag. It’s insulting to our American Values.

  • Dennis P Lewis

    December 4, 2020 at 7:47 pm

    Is “CENSORSHIP” part of the “COMMUNIST way of life”?

  • Dennis P Lewis

    December 4, 2020 at 8:01 pm

    We “White’s, Black’s, Brown’s, Yellow’s and American Indian”s fought together in War’s such as WW-1, 2, Korean, and Viet Nam as brothers and “WON”. Now the “COMMUNISM FASCISM” is trying to destroy our American way of life by using “RACISM” to divide America.

Comments are closed.


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