The Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality were speaking out at a rally protesting the 2015 UCI Road World Championships race route, which passes by several prominent Confederate monuments, when a plane from the Virginia Flaggers passed overhead.
It’s message was simple, and its spelling was awful: “Confederate heros matter.”
According to WTVR, in an interview after the video of the misspelled plane began to make the rounds of the internet, Virginia Flagger Susan Hathaway assured the world that yes, they did know how to spell. She explained that “we definitely gave the correct information to the pilot and apparently somewhere in the translation he missed it when he made the banner.”
“He misspelled the word and apparently that turned to a bigger issue than the banner itself,” she added. “Even with the ‘e’ missing, that point was very well understood by all who saw it. And that was our point.”
In the meantime, Ana Edwards, chair of the Defender’s Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project, continued to speak out against the race route even as the plane circled above her head. She explained that the choice of route was “deliberate” and bemoaned the fact that officials would not change the route despite being repeatedly asked by their group to do so.
“We are here today to tell the world that most Richmonders do not support showcasing these monuments to Confederate military and political leaders during this world famous sporting event,” Edwards said.