Posted on 01/06/2003 7:55:23 PM PST by stainlessbanner
At the beginning of the school year, Dixie Outfitters T-shirts were all the rage at Cherokee High School. Girls seemed partial to one featuring the Confederate battle flag in the shape of a rose. Boys often wore styles that discreetly but unmistakably displayed Dixie Outfitters' rebel emblem logo.
But now the most popular Dixie Outfitters shirt at the school doesn't feature a flag at all. It says: ''Jesus and the Confederate Battle Flag: Banned From Our Schools But Forever in Our Hearts.'' It became an instant favorite after school officials prohibited shirts featuring the battle flag in response to complaints from two African-American families who found them intimidating and offensive.
The ban is stirring old passions about Confederate symbols and their place in Southern history in this increasingly suburban high school, 40 miles northwest of Atlanta. Similar disputes over the flag are being played out more frequently in school systems -- and courtrooms -- across the South and elsewhere, as a new generation's fashion choices raise questions about where historical pride ends and racial insult begins.
Schools in states from Michigan to Alabama have banned the popular Dixie Outfitters shirts just as they might gang colors or miniskirts, saying they are disruptive to the school environment. The rebel flag's modern association with white supremacists makes it a flashpoint for racial confrontation, school officials say.
''This isn't an attempt to refute Southern heritage,'' said Mike McGowan, a Cherokee County schools spokesman. ''This is an issue of a disruption of the learning environment in one of our schools.''
Walter C. Butler Jr., president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, said it is unreasonable to ask African Americans not to react to someone wearing the rebel flag. ''To ask black people to respect a flag that was flown by people who wanted to totally subjugate and dehumanize you -- that is totally unthinkable,'' he said.
But the prohibitions against flag-themed clothing have prompted angry students, parents, Confederate-heritage groups and even the American Civil Liberties Union to respond with protests and lawsuits that argue that students' First Amendment rights are being trampled in the name of political correctness.
''This is our heritage. Nobody should be upset with these shirts,'' said Ree Simpson, a senior soccer player at Cherokee who says she owns eight Confederate-themed shirts. ''During Hispanic Heritage Month, we had to go through having a kid on the intercom every day talking about their history. Do you think they allow that during Confederate History Month?''
Simpson said no one complains when African-American students wear clothes made by FUBU, a black-owned company whose acronym means ''For Us By Us.'' Worse, she says, school officials have nothing to say when black students make the biting crack that the acronym also means ''farmers used to beat us.'' Similarly, she says, people assume that members of the school's growing Latino population mean no harm when they wear T-shirts bearing the Mexican flag.
Simpson believes the rebel flag should be viewed the same way. The days when the banner was a symbol of racial hatred and oppression are long gone, she contends. Far from being an expression of hate, she says, her affection for the flag simply reflects Southern pride. ''I'm a country girl. I can't help it. I love the South,'' she said. ''If people want to call me a redneck, let them.''
It is a sentiment that is apparently widely shared at Cherokee, and beyond. The day after Cherokee Principal Bill Sebring announced the T-shirt ban on the school's intercom this fall, more than 100 students were either sent home or told to change clothes when they defiantly wore the shirts to school. In the weeks that followed, angry parents and Confederate heritage groups organized flag-waving protests outside the school and at several school board meetings.
''All hell broke loose,'' said Tom Roach, an attorney for the Cherokee County school system. When principals banned the shirts at other county high schools in the past, he said, ''there was no public outcry. No complaints. No problems.''
But the Confederate flag was a particularly hot topic in Georgia this year. Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes was upset in his re-election bid in part because he successfully pushed for redesign of the Georgia state flag, which was formerly dominated by the Confederate battle emblem. On the new state banner, the emblem is reduced to a small icon. During the campaign, Barnes' opponent, Sonny Perdue, called for a referendum on the new flag, a position that analysts say helped make him the state's first elected Republican governor since Reconstruction.
Elsewhere in the South, civil rights groups have mobilized to remove the banner in recent years. Activists had it removed from atop the South Carolina statehouse and from other public places, saying it is an insult to African Americans and others who view it as a symbol of bigotry and state-sanctioned injustice. But that campaign has stirred a resentful backlash from groups that view it as an attack on their heritage.
''We're not in a battle just for that flag, we're in a battle to determine whether our Southern heritage and culture survives,'' said Dan Coleman, public relations director for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the groups that joined the protests at Cherokee High School.
The battle over Confederate-themed clothing has made its way to the courts, which generally have sided with school dress codes that prevent items that officials deem disruptive.
In a 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District that school officials could not prohibit students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, but only because the court found that the armbands were not disturbing the school atmosphere.
By contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit earlier this year revived a lawsuit by two Kentucky students suspended for wearing shirts featuring the Confederate flag. The court said the reasons for the suspension were vague and remanded the case to a lower court, where it was dismissed after the school district settled with the students.
Also, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit earlier this fall sided with a Washington, N.J., student who challenged his school's ban on a T-shirt displaying the word ''redneck.'' The student was suspended from Warren Hills Regional High School for wearing the shirt, which school officials said violated their ban on clothing that portrays racial stereotypes. The school's vice principal said he took ''redneck'' to mean a violent, bigoted person.
But the court overturned the ban, saying the shirt was not proven to be disruptive. School officials, noting the school has a history of racial tensions, have promised to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
''Since last year, we have gotten well over 200 complaints about the banning of Confederate symbols in schools,'' said Kirk Lyons, lead counsel for the Southern Legal Resource Center, a North Carolina-based public-interest law firm that works to protect Confederate heritage and is in discussions with some families at Cherokee High School. He said the center is litigating six lawsuits and that dozens of others challenging Confederate clothing bans have been filed across the country.
As the controversy grows, Confederate-themed clothing has become more popular than ever. The owner of Georgia-based Dixie Outfitters says the firm sold 1 million T-shirts last year through the company's Web site and department stores across the South. Most of the shirts depict Southern scenes and symbols, often with the Confederate emblem.
''This is not your typical, in-your-face redneck type of shirt,'' said Dewey Barber, the firm's owner. ''They are espousing the Southern way of life. We're proud of our heritage down here.''
Barber said he is ''troubled'' that his shirts are frequently banned by school officials who view them as offensive. ''You can have an Iraqi flag in school. You can have the Russian flag. You can have every flag but the Confederate flag. It is puzzling and disturbing,'' he said.
"The day before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Lincoln signed a contract to colonize Cow Island, off of Haiti. 453 free blacks were transported there, but 10 months later he ordered a transport to return 368 disgusted black colonists. Lincoln's private secretary, John Hay, noted on July 1, 1864, that Lincoln "has sloughed off the idea of colonization."
More later.
Walt
I did indeed use the quote from the SCV site. It came up in the search engine. It is incorrect ONLY as to which debate he said it in. He said it in Charleston, at at their fourth debate. They are his words exactly, and you damn well knew it. The SCV is no more a hate group than those organisations of union descendants. I will correct the location of his quote now. Here is what he said At the Charleston debate:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
That perfectly proves the first two points I made, just as it did the first time I quoted him. At their debate in Quincy he repeated the above quote verbatim, and then said:
"Now, I wish to show you that a month, or only lacking three days of a month, before I made the speech at Charleston, which the Judge quotes from, he had himself heard me say substantially the same thing. It was in our first meeting at Ottawa - and I will say a word about where it was, and the atmosphere it was in, after awhile - but at our first meeting, at Ottawa, I read an extract from an old speech of mine, made nearly four years ago, not merely to show my sentiments, but to show that my sentiments were long entertained and openly expressed; in which extract I expressly declared that my own feelings would not admit a social and political equality between the white and black races, and that even if my own feelings would admit of it, I still knew that the public sentiment of the country would not, and that such a thing was an utter impossibility, or substantially that."
You try out of context quotes to suggest interpretations that the record won't support.
ROFLMAO - Did you read your own quote??? It starts out thus:
"Now gentlemen, I don't want to read at any greater length, but this is the true complexion of all I have ever said in regard to the institution of slavery and the black race. This is the whole of it, and anything that argues me into his idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro, is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse."
Bwaaaahaaaahahaaahaa! That's what you keep trying to do, Walt! Lincoln chastises you from the grave!
MY quotes were completely in context. MY quotes were exactly in context. They perfectly prove my point that YOUR use of his words are completely unsupported by the record. I do not deny that Lincoln was against slavery because he thought blacks had the right to freedom, I said that quite plainly. What I did was to KEEP HIS REMARKS IN THE CONTEXT IN WHICH HE CLEARLY STATED THEM. He made it clear he wanted them to excercise those rights somewhere away from whites. He was NOT advocating black suffrage and their inclusion in white American society as you try to make it sound by misquoting him time and again. Here's another quote, this one from Ottawa when touching on the subject of what should be done with the blacks (since he did indeed think they had rights and should not be slaves):
"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, - to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South."
Lincoln was a long time advocate of ending slavery and colonizing the blacks back in Africa, and then later, in Central America. In the debates with Douglas he never advocated black suffrage and their inclusion in white American society. Never, not one single time.
I wouldn't look to those lying bums at the Sons of Confederate Veterans for my facts if I were you.
They may have incorrectly stated which debate it came from, but the quote was correct, word for word. But you knew that, didn't you Walt? That's what gets my goat, you know darn well that you deliberately misquote Lincoln and you do it anyway. If anyone is a lying bum it's you, and that has been proven time and again. What do you do for an encore, claim that Frederick Douglass said Lincoln wasn't prejudiced?
[Once again, I am not saying I think Lincoln evil because of his commonly held views of blacks, I am only refuting your revisionist claptrap that attempts to make him into something he wasn't. Historical perspective is everything, GET SOME.]
FRee dixie,sw
FRee dixie,sw
what wp is REALLY good at is posting long, off-point passages of DRIVEL & BILGEWATER.
FRee dixie,sw
I will admit that shows his willingness to let them go to Massachusetts, an abolitionist state. It would prevent the problems that would certainly occur in other northern states, and most especially would keep them from going back to power the secessionist states. At the same time, I must admit that it is very weak if it is to serve as an avowed reversal of his opinion in general as regards the vast majority of slaves still present in the South, and who would have to be dealt with once the war was over. What is your source for this letter? I wish to study it further, and can find no mention of its existence in the numerous Lincoln archives that I have searched so far. I will continue searching, but please, post a source.
He said in that address before congress, when he advocated a constitutional amendment for colonizing blacks, ""I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization." I doubt he woke up the next day, after pushing for a constitutional amendment, and changed his mind. Especially considering that the EP threat had already been issued, and the deadline was about to be reached in the next few weeks.
The commissioner of colonization reported to Lincoln in October, 1864 that he had not been paid since June, and that all his files had been removed "long before."
Somehow I think you know the reason for that and are obfuscating the true history for your own purpose. The radicals had something to do with that, and not with Lincoln's support. If that isn't so, please show it.
Lincoln tried to get blacks and whites to buy off on colonization, saying to a group of border state represrentatives: "Upon these considerations..."
Damn, Walt. He was trying to get them to endorse compensated emancipation and COLONIZATION. Here's a part you DELIBERATELY LEFT OUT OF THE SAME ADDRESS:
Room in South America for colonization, can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance; and when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go.
You are one sick freak, man. You actually post from a PRO-COLONIZATION document and then claim its the opposite. You're not a victim of revisionism, you're twisted. If this is not the case, and you were victimized by some other source, please post it so ALL can know to avoid it. BTW, thanks for the additional pro-colonization source.
In the Hodges letter of 4/4/64 he said:
Where in the letter does he mention a change in his colonization policy, or even hint at it? He doesn't. Not once, ever. He is only justifying his decision to arm blacks and try to draw labor and fighting resources from the South. You're making it say things it does not say. You might as well post sections of the phone book as "proof".
President Lincoln knew that for better or worse, blacks were going to be living in this country and he said: "When you give the Negro these rights, when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood."
I had not questioned your earlier use of this quote, but I will now. Where, exactly, is it from? I cannot find it in the many Lincoln archives on the net. But otherwise, I see nothing in the quote that would affect his well established goal of colonization. Lincoln had always maintained that blacks had the right of freedom and should be able to fairly excercise that right amongst themselves, removed from what he saw as the natural domination that would occur if they lived amongst whites. There is nothing in this quote to indicate any change in that view.
I would like to study this further, where can I find the whole document?
That is pretty much what happened -- once black soldiers were fighting under Old Glory.
Walt
He said in that address before congress, when he advocated a constitutional amendment for colonizing blacks, ""I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization."
That was 12/01/62. Find something said by Lincoln later. It's not there.
You neo-rebs want to look at the early Lincoln and then try to convince the gullible that he didn't change, but he did.
At the end of his life -- no matter what he said in 1858 or 1862 -- he was advocating full rights for blacks.
Walt
You can't prove a negative.
What the neo-rebs can't do is flesh out any substance to Butler's book. Where is the evidence in the record between 1865 and 1892 that Butler met with Lincoln and discussed these things? Butler is the only source that I have seen advanced.
John Hay, on the other hand, backs up with his diary entry what is amply supported in the record. By 1864 Lincoln was through with colonization.
Walt
I didn't know it. Parts of the speeches are very similar.
Lincoln made the comment that blacks were included in the Declaration of Independence, and had a right to the fruits of their labor at Ottowa. At Charleston, he toned down this considerably, saying something to the effect that just because the negro didn't get everything didn't mean he got nothing. That is pretty watered down.
Charleston, I believe, is a lot further south than Ottowa. I'll grant that Lincoln played to the more southern audience in Charleston.
But he was still taking a position much advanced from most people of the day, and the SCV was still quoting the record in a skewed fashion to support an ahistorical interpretation. They preach honor, and then act dishonorably.
Walt
As you note, colonization had generally gone hand in hand with emancipation. But this wasn't a particular feature of Lincoln's mind. It certainly wasn't something unique to him. It was part of the political landscape of the era, at least outside small radical circles. The other option, more popular in the country as a whole, was no colonization and no emancipation.
And, indeed, if we look at the century after emancipation, we might take another look at the colonizers' idea that "separation was the only way that blacks could achieve true liberty and exercise those rights" and avoid domination and oppression by Whites. While the supporters of resettlement may have been morally wrong, were they so terribly wrong about the effects of emancipation or the willingness of Whites to accept Blacks as equals and respect their rights? Racial equality might have been something worth fighting for, but for a century it was an unpopular and a losing cause. Colonization may have been a heartless idea and a betrayal, but it also involved a shrewd and hard-headed assessment of what public opinion allowed.
Those who accepted slavery didn't have to say anything about colonization. Some of them said much about the inequality of the races and the impossibility of integration as equals. And they did have their own analogous ideas -- running off freed slaves and abolitionists, shipping Blacks as slaves to newly acquired territories. Colonization only became an issue if one accepted or promoted emancipation. I wouldn't want to be so determined and impassioned in attacking colonization that I made advocates and champions of slavery look good. Nor is there some process that inevitably determined that freedmen would be accepted as equals if they stayed here long enough. Certainly, for a century after emancipation such an inevitability was hard to see.
Lincoln played no great role in the colonization movement, but willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, he played a great role in bringing that movement to an end. If he'd wanted resettlement, he would have pushed harder for it. Instead he let it die away. He didn't slam the door shut on emigration, but neither did he promote or urge it on the country or the Black population, when it became clear that it wasn't wanted.
The quotations posted here by others bear this out. What Lincoln's critics seem to want is some unequivocal condemnation of colonization as evil. Given the attitudes of the day that couldn't have happened. Columnists and essayists can make such declarations. Politicians and statesmen are jugglers, keeping a different ideas and policies in the air, some that have to be implemented, some that have outgrown their usefulness or possibility, and others whose time hasn't yet come. What matters is the result achieved, not a set of fine position papers with no concrete achievements to show for them.
Lincoln's motivations are hard to sort out. Radical Republicans might have had some effect. Flattery and the adulation of freedmen for Lincoln might also have played a part in changing his mind. But an appreciation the fighting ability, tenacity, desire for freedom and committment to the country of the Black population was likely to be the major factor.
Lincoln would never think as Frederick Douglass did, but this is natural: no politician of the 1960s could think of Black-White relations as Martin Luther King did. Nor would we expect them to. Leaving aside the question of King's views, we take into account the distance those politicians came. None of them probably looked on African-Americans in the same way that White Americans born after 1965 do, but some had come a long way in that direction.
But I don't think the idea of using Blacks as cannon fodder was very much a part of his change. It's said that's what the country did in the American Revolution: it used Black soldiers to win independence, and, having won independence, it denied them the freedom that they would have won had they fought for the other side. Perhaps Lincoln would have behaved similarly towards Blacks had he lived and used them without granting them citizenship, but it's unlikely. And in this Lincoln would have been ahead of most of his contemporaries or the Founders themselves.
So, yes, Lincoln didn't share our accepted ideas about race and integration. Neither did Washington or Jefferson or Jackson, or Polk or Theodore Roosevelt or Wilson or FDR, or the majority of those who favored or opposed such statesmen. But he did do something to advance our understanding of race and justice, and should have some respect on that score. Many Confederate types condemn Lincoln for attitudes he shared with many others in his day, before and later. But hold the founders -- and indeed, the Confederates -- to such standards and no one will be left standing, though it is likely that Federalists and Whigs will end up looking better than Jeffersonians or Jacksonians on racial issues.
??? But that is exactly what you're doing with regards to Lincoln's alleged abandonment of his often stated views on race. The statements or documents rejecting his earlier views have not been presented, yet you act as if they have. As to the Butler quote, what then, makes you think it untrue? A desire for that to be so, based on nothing more than that desire? With regards to both issues, you are like a nearly blind man wearing dark glasses in a dark room with the lights turned off searching for a black cat that isn't there. Yet you keep shouting "I found it, I found it!". To accept the real Lincoln brings no shame, Walt. He was always against slavery, he always thought the black man had rights. His other opinions of them and a desire for separation are only a mirror of the times. Historical perspective is everything, get some.
What the neo-rebs can't do is flesh out any substance to Butler's book.
Apparently the neo-unionists can't flush out any proof it is incorrect, or you would have presented it, instead of simply proclaiming it false because it doesn't fit your desired beliefs.
Where is the evidence in the record between 1865 and 1892 that Butler met with Lincoln and discussed these things? Butler is the only source that I have seen advanced.
By the same token, where is the proof he did not. If it were untrue, would not at least one of the many people associated with Butler or Lincoln have stated so after it was published? If such claims of falsehood existed by contemporaries, I would think that you would have found them and flooded the thread with them.
John Hay, on the other hand, backs up with his diary entry what is amply supported in the record. By 1864 Lincoln was through with colonization.
Not so. He commented on the fact that Lincoln had quit pushing it so hard at that time. An obvious result of the funding being cut off by the radicals who opposed it.
Then I apologize for my harshness. I assumed you knew the debates were a traveling roadshow, of sorts, with each reading virtually the same speeches at each place. There were minor variations here and there.
Lincoln made the comment that blacks were included in the Declaration of Independence, and had a right to the fruits of their labor at Ottowa...
Yes, he did, and I believe he stated that at each location, IIRC. I'd have to look again, but I think he made that point at Charleston too. Douglas would not omit mentioning it there. His belief that the black man was endowed with freedom just like whites was the basis for his anti-slavery stance. But within the same speeches he also made it abundantly clear that he did NOT mean he advocated the two races to co-exist, and that he thought blacks inferior, a common idea of the day. He felt the black man would never truly be able to excercise his rights and flourish if he were to live amongst "superior" whites. It's all there if you go through the whole speeches. Most books only use the "good" snippets, which often misleads the reader. Everytime I have mentioned this, I have done so only to put his words back into perspective. Read the speeches in their entirety, and you will see. He was always against slavery, and always thought blacks had the right of freedom, even if he also thought them inferior and preferred separation of the races. It was the 1850s, after all.
But he was still taking a position much advanced from most people of the day,
He was more advanced than the average American, that is absolutely true, but by the same token, he was nowhere near the top of the ladder, either. To abolitionists and some other republicans he was way down there. Once again, I only point these things out to prevent distortion of history. Historical perspective.
and the SCV was still quoting the record in a skewed fashion to support an a historical interpretation. They preach honor, and then act dishonorably.
That's not true. The debate it came from was wrong, but the quote was correct as to his words, and it was given to provide Lincoln's own words to show how skewed many "historians" have made "history". The fantasy that Lincoln didn't have race prejudice has grown to the point of absurdity. Just look at the works of people like Jaffa (actually, don't. his excuse making goes beyond fantasy). That quote was provided that way as a reaction to revisionism, the enemy of truth. Defending truth is an honorable thing.
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