A controversial float featuring two men dressed as Confederate soldiers — and a poorly received joke — left parade-goers aghast at a Christmas parade in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas on Saturday.
One of the men apparently joked about handing out bullets instead of candy to children watching the parade.
A local music producer posted video of the controversial parade float to Facebook on the night of the parade in Springbank, Ark.
The video shows two men standing on a flatbed trailer decorated with Christmas lights and Confederate flags. A dark blue pickup truck tows the trailer.
As the truck and trailer make their way through the crowd, children are heard yelling for candy.
One of the men responds to the children: “I’ve got bullets. You want bullets?”
Fox 24 KNWA reports that the float belongs to the group Arkansas Sons of Confederate Veterans.
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The group’s leader Trip Wilson told reporter Peyton Yager there was nothing “illegal, or illicit or wrong” with the float.
“Some people have misconceptions of what Confederate states were and what the war was about and people who have those misconceptions have preconceived ideas of what their feelings are,” he said.
In the video, the men are asked, “Are you fighting for slavery?”
When they respond “no,” the same man asks, “You know what the South fought for?”
The organizer of the parade, The Rodeo of the Ozarks, told Arkansas Democrat Gazette the float was one of 70 entries by local groups and that there was no vetting process because they’ve “never needed one before.”
“We want to provide happy, positive experiences to help families enjoy the season,” the group’s executive director Rick Culver told the newspaper.
“That anything happened in the parade that was negative, or hurt anybody’s feelings, we are sorry,” he said.