YouTuber says error led to Confederate flag in NC ‘State Fair’ booth
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Stacy said he only learned his video was shown in the booth after the controversy arose.
- He says an editing error made a Confederate-pattern flag appear in the video.
- Mt. Olive Pickles pulled its support from the booth, citing “values of human dignity.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the video creator’s source for the flag.
Carter Stacy had no idea his YouTube video was selected to play inside North Carolina’s booth at the Great American State Fair in Washington, D.C. — until it caused a statewide uproar.
Stacy runs “That Is Interesting,” a geography channel with 248,000 subscribers, best known for “The US Explained,” a deep-dive documentary series on each state.
When Spectrum News posted a video from inside the booth, it captured the moment when Stacy discusses the history of North Carolina’s flags. On the screen is a flag with part of the North Carolina state flag on the left, and the infamous X-shape of the Confederate battle flag on the right — a symbol that has never been part of North Carolina’s official state flag, even during the Civil War.
“My biggest complaint with North Carolina’s flag, though, is that it is based off the flag the state used when it was part of the Confederacy, a trend that is unfortunately still very common among the Southern flags,” Stacy says in the four-year-old video. While Stacy’s statement is basically accurate — North Carolina’s current state flag does bear resemblance to the flag it flew when it seceded from the Union — the flag on the screen is a fabrication.
Because Stacy wasn’t aware of his involvement with the fair, he also didn’t immediately hear about the controversy his video created. He's from California, after all. But once he knew, Stacy edited the flag and his narration about it out of his video. He attributes the historically inaccurate flag once included in the video to an editing error.
“I wrote that segment intending to show North Carolina’s 1861 flag, which it adopted during the Confederacy, and which strongly resembles its current flag,” Stacy told The News & Observer. “It appears that during the editing process, I unintentionally showed a Confederate flag instead. This image was mistakenly overlapped with the previous image, of North Carolina’s current flag, giving it the appearance that the two flags were combined. I’ve since fixed this editing error. I hope that otherwise, my video still represents North Carolina well.”
However, Stacy links to a list of image sources in the description of the video. One of those sources, a Wikimedia entry titled North Carolina Rebel Flag, shows the fabricated flag in full — suggesting it may not have been an editing error after all.
Asked about that source, Stacy acknowledged he “must’ve accidentally grabbed the wrong image.”
Because North Carolina chose not to officially participate in the Trump-affiliated Great American State Fair, the state’s booth was run by private organizers and businesses. One of those businesses, Mt. Olive Pickles, pulled its support in light of the video, citing “values of human dignity.”
Other organizers of the booth include race car company Richard Childress Racing, vehicle manufacturer Spevco, and Lorie Khatod, a strategic consultant and former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina.
Neither Spevco nor Khatod answered questions about who was responsible for selecting Stacy’s video for the booth, despite responding to other inquiries. Spevco, however, said that it “did not create, produce, edit, approve or select” it. The video has now been removed from the booth, according to Khatod. Childress Racing did not respond to a request for comment.
The Great American State Fair will continue through July 10.
This story was originally published July 7, 2026 at 10:46 AM with the headline "YouTuber says error led to Confederate flag in NC ‘State Fair’ booth."
