In their study of Confederate symbols in the contemporary Southern United States, the Southern political scientists James Michael Martinez, William Donald Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su wrote:  The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans' groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election. Southern historian Gordon Rhea further wrote in 2011 that: Symbols of the Confederacy remain a contentious issue across the United States and their civic placement has been debated vigorously in many southern U.S. state legislatures since the early 1990s, such as the effort that led to the replacement of Georgia's flag in 2001. Supporters have labeled attempts to display the flag as an exercise of free speech in response to bans in some schools and universities, but have not always been successful in court when attempting to use this justification. In a 2001 essay, "Old Times There Are Best Forgotten", Emory University professor Lucas Carpenter observed that "Contemporary Confederate sympathizers want free use of Confederate symbolism because they say it represents their 'heritage.' It does, of course, but it is heritage chiefly characterized by its brutal oppression of slaves and their 'free' descendants. The most important thing to know about the South is that until recently it was a region ruled by slavery and apartheid." The flag has found some popularity in places far outside of the former Confederacy, especially in rural areas in the United States. When researching his ethnography of whites, "Searching for Whitopia", scholar Rich Benjamin kept a notepad while traveling the Pacific Northwest. "I remember driving through swaths of Washington and Oregon and seeing a lot of Confederate flags," Benjamin explained to journalist Matthew Novak. "There are a lot of refugees from the South who seem attracted to Oregon not because they're racists, but because Oregon has a racial homogeneity and a conservatism and a gun culture that they really appreciate." The Pacific Northwest offers a cultural collision between the Confederate flag, other emblems of racism, and its new technological profit hubs. Calls for the removal of Confederate flags from Jefferson Davis Park in southwestern Washington State began in 2015, after the Charleston church shooting, by Rev. Marva Edwards, the president of Vancouver's NAACP chapter. Even though the markers and flags are located on private property, they are and were intended to be highly visible (to all cars travelling Interstate 5). Their visibility, and events in other parts of the nation regarding Confederate memorials, still make these symbols a local focus of strong emotions, especially in the aftermath of the white nationalist Unite the Right rally August 11–12, 2017.