He stood outside his parents' home decades ago watching white kids lean from car windows while waving a red, white and blue banner that was not America's flag.

In the following years, the Confederate Stars and Bars came to symbolize many things to James Gallman, none of them good.

ALAN HAWES/STAFF Booker Manigault, right, and his wife Greta, second from right, stand with fellow members of the NAACP outside the North Charleston Coliseum Saturday, in North Charleston, S.C. The group is encouraging a boycott of the state of South Carolina because of the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag on statehouse grounds.

That was why Gallman joined about 50 other activists who picketed the Southern Conference Basketball Tournament on Saturday as part of the NAACP's protest against the Confederate flag on the Statehouse grounds.

The SoCon Tournament, which was expected to draw 5,000 people and $3 million to the Charleston area, was yet another high-profile place where the NAACP chose to voice its message, asking visitors not to spend money in South Carolina until the Confederate symbol is removed from the monument.

"The Confederate flag is the swastika for African-Americans, and that's why we want it removed," said Gallman, the president of the South Carolina State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The 60-year-old retired school administrator from Aiken and others lined the North Charleston Coliseum entrance off International Boulevard holding signs, talking to passers-by and giving away T-shirts.

Another protester, the Rev. H.H. Singleton II, said that as a young man he didn't understand what the flag stood for.

"Later, I realized it symbolized racism, segregation, lynchings and beatings."

Singleton, a 71-year-old Conway resident, is a member of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP and made the motion in 2000 to impose economic sanctions on the state until the Confederate flag was removed from the Statehouse dome. Legislators complied with that request and moved the banner to the Confederate monument on the Statehouse grounds. During the debate, NAACP officials said that site was still too visible and they wanted the flag placed in a museum setting.

Dwight James, the executive director of the NAACP's state chapter in Columbia, said protests provide immediate gratification because he and others get the opportunity to speak with people of all races and nationalities.

More whites than blacks asked questions about the boycott; Japanese and Chinese tourists also stopped for information. They told James they thought the boycott had ended, but he said protests will continue.

SoCon Tournament organizers said earlier this week they respect the group's right to protest and did not expect the picketing to affect attendance.