TORONTO — Activist Ybia Anderson confronted the unnamed owner of a replica General Lee muscle car at a heritage festival last Saturday and the resulting video has gone viral.
Anderson, who is black, began videoing the car, a 1969 Dodge Charger similar to the one featured on the television show "The Dukes of Hazzard" as it was "front and center, the first thing people see when they walk in" at the Highland Creek Heritage Festival in Toronto.
Narrating, she also says on-camera that an unnamed man — possibly the owner of the vehicle — is attempting to “educate (her) on the Civil War.”
Anderson lays into the man for the Confederate flag proudly displayed on the car.
"People who look exactly like me and my son died, were murdered, because of that flag," she told him. "They hung our people from trees until their eyes bugged out." She tells him that he, a white man, cannot understand why the Confederate flag is offensive.
The increasingly emotional exchange gets the attention of two festival officials, both of whom attempt to handle it calmly. One of them is black.
Festival officials did apologize for the incident.
"We recognize that symbology can be profoundly evocative," Paul Maguire, chairman of the festival organization committee, wrote on social media. "We did not, and would not, choose to present any element that brings to mind one of the ugliest periods of human history. The committee uniformly decries all actions of hate, past and present."