you to orangeburg, south carolina, population ruffoughly 13,000. on the left, a confederate flag right next to the sign for the edisto creamery. everyone in orangeburg has an opinion about the flag at the ice cream shop. it needs to come down. i never stop there. don t plan to as long as that flag is still there. it s not hurting anybody. it needs to come down. ? i thi i think it will get more business. reporter: and what does the owner say? that flag needs to be done, and we re gridlocked. reporter: you need to know about this man. the south shall rise again. reporter: maurice bessinger,
politician, activist and founder of maurice s barbecue. he showed off his collection of confederate memorabilia. he was a fierce defender of state s rights and segregation. in his 2004 auto biography. he called the civil rights act unconstitutional and the supreme court ruling that integrated public schools a really bad decision. then in 2000, when this happened at the south carolina state capita. i raised the flag out here to protest the take down of our heritage flag. reporter: maurice bessinger died in 2014. of the flags outside his stores he wrote, there they will stay, i will fight on, because this is what god wants me to do. a year after his death, tommy daris and his wife bought the orangeburg location from bessinger s children, but not all of it. before he died, bessinger sold a
and a not so bad situation for black people. and the civil rights movement and the end to legal racial segregation never changed his mind about that. in this century, into the 2000s, he was still distributing pamphlets at his piggy park restaurants with titles like a biblical view of slavery. while you waited for your ribs and coleslaw, you could read about the many african slaves who blessed the lord for allowing them to be enslaved and sent to america. this neotitan of pulled pork said they ate better because their segregated dining room was in the kitchen. maybe the food was hotter when it got to them or something. maurice bessinger held those views as recently as the year 2000 and when he wrote a book about it in 2001. this is the cover of his auto biography complete with a giant stars and bars. he held these beliefs into the 21st century but in the 21st
the religious beliefs against contraception in this case were beliefs that were reasonable or scientifically accurate. the court said their only job was to figure out if those beliefs were sincerely held. that s enough. maurice bessinger is dead now but even dead he might find this conclusion. his belief as divinely ordained that was certainly held lifelong on religion. in his case that was not enough to deprive other people from protection and rights they were afforded under law. now the court today said apparently religion is all you need. reverend dr. welton gaddy is the president of the interfaith alliance. the interfaith alliance filed a brief in this case. reverend gaddy, when this ruling came down today, released this rather blistering statement. the supreme court made a grave error today. the balance between religious freedom and other compelling interests has always been tenuous. we may very well remember today s decision as the moment that balance was radically
century he could no longer enforce these beliefs at his business. he had taken the case for divinely inspired racial segregation, he took his case to federal court, argued the civil rights act contravenes the will of god. he had to be allowed to ban black people from dining rooms in his restaurants because he believed that god compelled that and the u.s. supreme court heard that argument from maurice bessinger of the piggy park barbecue empire of south carolina and the united states supreme court ruled 8-0 he actually had no right to discriminate just because he said god told him to. the court looked at the right of the barbecue guy to hold his religious views and looked at right of americans to move freely in society and rallied for other americans not to be impeded by his religious views. ruled 8-0. it was unanimous. two decades later the federal court got another case from california.