The Volo Auto Museum has made an offer to buy the first version of the General Lee car from the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard" in order to preserve the historical significance of the Confederate flag painted on it.
Museum director Brian Grams has reached out to the car's owner Bubba Watson, a professional golfer, according to the Daily Herald. Watson said he planned to paint over the Confederate flag and replace it with an American flag in response to the national debate sparked by the massacre of nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Grams said he plans to keep the Confederate flag on the car to preserve it as a historical artifact, the Daily Herald reports.
The museum already has one General Lee car on display and announced in June it would not remove the Confederate flag painted on its roof. In an statement, the museum said removing the flag "will not change the facts."
"If any location is appropriate for displaying a Confederate flag, it is within a museum," Volo Auto Museum officials said in the release.
Grams defended the museum's decision not to remove the flag on the car currently displayed, saying it should stay for historical reasons.
“We are a museum, a place where people can view and learn about history,” Grams said in a statement. “History is not a book to be edited where you can just keep the parts you like and erase the parts you do not like. The TV show happened. The General Lee wore a Confederate Flag … erasing it will not change the facts.”
