I live in the greater Pensacola, Florida area.  In front of our City Hall located downtown, there are five regulation flagpoles set in a semi-circle.  On these poles fly the flags representing five nations that have claimed northwest Florida since Europeans first came to North America's shores.  It is said that these flags are part of Pensacola's history and heritage.  They are officially flown by the city government.

The historic French flag should be removed from the flag display at City Hall. It should be removed from the flag displays on Bayfront Parkway and the Palafox Street post office.   It should be taken off city documtents and city property, such as downtown lamppost banners, and the trolley cars.  It should be removed from the "Fiesta of Five Flags" organization and taken off all their printed materials.

The historic French flag is a painful reminder of vicious religious bigotry, oppression and persecution.  It should be banned from all public display in the United States of America.

For 30 years after the protestant reformation began, French Catholics hammered and battered French protestants, called Huguenots -- persecuted them, oppressed them, made war on them.  In one of those wars, the Huguenots won.  They installed their man, Henry of Navarre, on the throne of France.  Although the victor (himself a Huguenot) conciliated and became a Catholic to keep the peace in France, he also issued the Edict of Nantes, which gave complete religious freedom to Huguenots.  For a while....

When Louis the 14th ascended to the throne he revoked the Edict of Nantes and persecuted the Huguenots mercilessly.  They were oppressed, beaten, tortured, murdered -- circumstances that caused them to flee France in droves.  Some estimate that 800,000 Huguenots left France for other parts of Europe, South Africa, and North America. 

Among those uprooted from their home by the vicious hand of bigotry was a surgeon from Charost, in the Province of Berry, by the name of Pierre Chastain.  He, his wife, and their children escaped France in 1698 and over a two year period made their way to Vevey, Canton Vaud, Switzerland, and from there to the Hague and from the Hague to London.  There Pierre got involved in organizing a group of Huguenots for colonization in Virginia.

The seven Chastains were among the 207 Huguenot passengers aboard The Mary and Ann of London which departed Gravesend, England in April of 1700 and reached the James River on August 1. 

I am an 8-great granddaughter of Pierre Chastain.  I live in Pensacola, Florida where the city government honors the flag of a nation that practiced heinous, brutal, vicious persecution upon my ancestors. 

It has been over a century since France owned a piece of northwest Florida.  Why is this flag allowed to fly on American soil?   It's history, it's dead.   If it should exist here at all, it belongs at the bottom of a file cabinet in a museum somewhere.