I spent a day driving around South Carolina, stopping at any house that had a Confederate flag. http://t.co/R0cmvuSDTK

— Chico Harlan (@chicoharlan) June 23, 2015

Lots of people are trying to put hate into it, but to me it’s a part of my heritage,” said Ron Campbell, 64, who has a Confederate flag planted in his front yard, right in front of a sign that says his home is “protected by loaded guns.”

“It’s a big tradition,” he said moments later, and he said he wasn’t a hateful guy: He worked with blacks before retiring from a corrugated-box company, and he once had some drinks at a mostly black bar, and he had a couple of black friends back in Florida, “where people don’t hold as much of a grudge.”

“The only thing that really gets me — black heritage is being pushed hard,” Campbell said. “On the TV news, always one black guy and one white guy. They have Black History Month. Hell, they’ve got it better than I do, a lot of the blacks. Most are smarter than me. I’m just a common guy.”