A museum in the United States promised to continue displaying the car from the television program Dukes of Hazzard that had the Confederate battle flag painted on the ceiling.
The Dodge Charger car, known as General Lee after the chief of the southern forces during the United States Civil War, is located in the Volo Automobile Museum, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Chicago.
But despite the collapse of Confederate-era statues across the country since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, museum owners have said the car that appeared in the show’s first season “won’t go anywhere.”
“We feel like the car is part of the story, and people love it,” Brian Grams, museum director, told the Crystal Lake-based Northwest Herald. “We have people of all races and nationalities who remember the television show and are not offended by it. It’s a piece of history and it’s in a museum. “
The museum acquired the car in 2005 and no one had complained about the exhibition, Grams said.
It was believed to be the last surviving 1969 Charger used in the first season of the popular television show about the adventures of two cousins, Luke and Bo Duke, in rural Hazzard County, Georgia, which ran between 1979 and 1985. The program was also made into a movie
“And the museum has continued to listen to people who support the decision to keep the car,” said Grams. “Several people have communicated positive comments about us leaving it on display, congratulating us for leaving it there and not having an knee-jerk reaction to remove it like many places do.”
Grams said that General Lee was a piece of history and that the museum would not remove it any more than he would think to remove the Nazi artifacts displayed in its military section. “If we received complaints about General Lee’s presence here, we have much worse elements in our military building,” he said.
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