Virginia Beach, Va. - Nearly a dozen pickup trucks flying the Confederate flag drove up and down the Oceanfront over the weekend.
Cell phone video taken by Japharri Jones of Hampton, shows the trucks on Atlantic Avenue. Witnesses say the drivers were also screaming racial slurs at folks passing by.
"They're screaming. They're yelling and honking their horns," says Angel Cook, one of the witnesses. "I was petrified, I was like what is going on?"
Jones says the trucks drove for two hours before two of the cars crashed into one another. Although the damage was minimal, what Virginia Beach visitors saw over the weekend cannot be easily fixed.
"I want to be out enjoying myself and to have people out there yelling and screaming racial slurs, it's not a good look."
We spoke with one of the men who participated in the incident.
"We just wanted to go out there and show that we aren't out there to hate people," says William French.
He says his goal was to change the way that people see the flag.
"The flag doesn't stand for racism or slavery to us. The flag is a symbol we are proud to be southerners, we love the south we are from here," says French.
He denies the claims that they yelled racial slurs. He says it was actually the other way around.
"I had a bunch of people come up to my window saying a bunch of negative things about what we were doing, and I have nothing negative to say about them," says French.
He says their goal is to keep the confederate flag flying. French stressed that their use of the flag is not associated with any hate groups.
"The KKK is a radical extremist group that we are no where in no way shape or form we do not support them at all," says French.
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