Mayor Peyton Wikipedia.com Entry

There is currently a very interesting wikipedia.com listing on Mayor John Peyton. We're not sure how long it will be there, so we thought we would copy and paste the text here. It is currently under the External Links section of the mayor's wikipedia profile.

Published August 25, 2006 in News - MetroJacksonville.com

"On August 18, 2006, Mayor John Peyton met behind closed doors with members of the Jacksonville NAACP. Many in Jacksonville, Florida believe the Mayor has acted inappropriately by not replacing the Fire Chief after the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission issued a 35 page report finding that the city's fire department was replete with racism. The report even went as far as to recommend the mayor get rid of Barrett as Fire Chief. But Mayor Peyton says he won’t fire Chief Barrett.

The mayor's family-owned business has actually put a price tag on racism. Gate Petroleum, a company owned by Mayor Peyton and his family, sells novelty items which depict the Confederate battle flag. Gate never removed the items, despite customer complaints.

Although many Americans are offended by the Confederate flag because they see it as a symbol of sedition, and believe that celebrating an act of treason against the United States of America is offensive - especially when troops are in harms way, many more see the flag as a symbol of racism.

Is Mayor Peyton a racist? We don’t really know. But we do know that if we were the mayor and the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission recommended that the fire chief be fired, we would have fired him. We also know that if our family owned a business in which we were involved, that business would NOT sell novelty items bearing the Confederate flag."

This could be found at the following link on August 25, 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peyton_%28US_politician%29

This article can be found at: https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2006-aug-mayor-peyton-wikipediacom-entry