Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson has come under fire this week after a photo from 2003 surfaced showing him wearing what appears to be a ‘stars and bars’ style necktie, a design reminiscent of the Confederate flag.

Local activists and even U.S. Senator Ed Markey have spoken out against the image, taken nearly 20 years ago for the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office website.

“No one, especially someone in law enforcement, should be wearing confederate symbols and doubling down on them when called out about it,” Markey tweeted on June 12 with the sheriff’s photo.

Hodgson fired back, tweeting, “I wore the tie in this 17-year-old photo because it had patriotic colors (red, white and blue), and not because it "resembled" some fringe neo-anglo-confederate-whatever group from hundreds of years ago that I’d never heard of until yesterday.”

Activists with Bristol County for Correctional Justice and other groups have condemned Hodgson for saying in an interview with WBUR journalist Shannon Dooling that he would continue to wear the tie, despite multiple historians and civil rights groups agreeing on its confederate symbolism.

LaSalla Hall of the New Bedford chapter of the NAACP said, “It is essential that elected officials be mindful of the images and messages that they are sending to the public and their constituents. The confederate flag for many communities of color, black folks in particular, portrays white supremacy and incites a level of discomfort and agitation among blacks, indigenous, and people of color."

“New Bedford was the home of renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. New Bedford is the starting place of the courageous, all-black 54th Regiment of the Civil War Union forces. It’s disturbing that our local sheriff would proudly display a pro-slavery symbol — even after learning that historians agree it represents the Confederacy,” said Alex Houston of Bristol County for Correctional Justice.

“It’s not a confederate tie, it’s a patriotic tie,” reiterated a Bristol County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson. “Nobody’s ever complained about it until the left wing political activists started peddling it to the media.”

He called the accusation that Hodgson was connected to Confederate ideology “absurd and reckless,” adding, “the whole thing is ridiculous.”

Sheriff Hodgson was in Washington, D.C. on June 16 to stand with other law enforcement officials behind President Trump as he signed an executive order to raise standards on policing after months of protests against police brutality and racism. Hodgson is the honorary chairman for Trump’s reelection campaign in Massachusetts.

Bristol County for Correctional Justice will be holding a rally and car caravan on Thursday, June 18 in New Bedford to demand the sheriff’s resignation.