Student files lawsuit over confederate flag ban.

originally from spofga.org but can be found on georgiaheritagecoalition.org also.

Student files suit against school board

The Southern Legal Resource Center

News Release For additional information contact the SLRC at 828.669.5189/slrc@slrc-csa.org

For immediate release Friday, December 17, 2004 Student files suit against school board In Confederate prom dress case

LEXINGTON, KY – A young woman who was turned away from her high school prom because she was wearing a Confederate flag patterned evening gown will hold a press conference Monday after she files suit against the school board and officials who kept her out. Jacqueline Duty, a 2004 graduate of Russellville High School, is asking actual and punitive damages against the Russell Independent Board of Education, Superintendent Ronnie H. Back and Russell High Principal John Howard. The suit will be filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Lexington.

Following Monday’s filing, a press conference will be held at 1 p.m. on the steps of the U.S. Courthouse, 101 Barr Street. Ms. Duty will make a brief statement, as will her attorney, Earl Ray Neal, and officials of the Southern Legal Resource Center of Black Mountain, North Carolina, whose Chief Trial Counsel will act as co-counsel.

Former SLRC client Timothy Castorina, successful plaintiff in a landmark Sixth U.S. Circuit case that struck down a ban on Confederate-themed clothing in schools, is also expected to attend the press conference. Neal and Lyons/SLRC represented Castorina in the 5 ½ year court struggle

“Ms. Duty was intimidated and humiliated on what should have been one of the happiest nights of her young life by some very overzealous and wrong-headed people,” said SLRC Executive Director Roger McCredie. “She is entitled to vindication and we will work to see that she gets it.”

Earl Ray Neal is an attorney and adjunct Law Professor in Richmond, KY

The Southern Legal Resource Center is a nonprofit law firm that advocates on behalf of persons whose civil and constitutional rights have been violated in connection with expression of their Confederate heritage.
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FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CONTACT: Roger McCredie (828) 669-5189 exec@slrc-csa.org rebscape@charter.net

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ahem Timothy Castorina, successful plaintiff in a landmark Sixth U.S. Circuit case that struck down a ban on Confederate-themed clothing in schools, is also expected to attend the press conference

there you are!

HI, Twit!

are you ready to go find yourself a LIFE?

or, otoh, would you prefer to be LAUGHED AT by EVERYONE on FR who has a "higher than room temperature" IQ???

OR perhaps you belong over on DU with the other fools, idiots,cretins, lunatics & DIMocRAT losers.

judging by your IGNORANT,arrogant, hateFILLED response, you also might well be a candidate for robes & a hood. (it is good that the hoods are POINTED to match the POINTED HEADS of the IDIOTS that wear them!)

begone to DU. they'll LIKE you.

free dixie,sw

Plenty of upstate backcountry people in Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama saw secession as a project of rich slaveowners that had little to offer poor mountaineers. As the war went on, more Southerners came to see the war in this light, even in the lowlands -- all the more so, since there were exemptions from the draft for those who had many slaves.

In general, those states which had the highest proportions of slaves and slaveowners voted for secession, and voted for it early. Those with lower percentages went along later or, where the percentage was lowest, not at all.

This held for the 1860 elections, if a vote for Breckenridge can be taken as a vote for secession and one for Bell as a vote against it: Breckenridge tended to carry the states with more slaves, Bell, those with fewer. The exceptions were Delaware and Maryland, where Bell and Douglas split the moderate vote, but they don't affect the general rule.

It is true that in some states the large slaveowners of many were Whigs and later Constitutional Unionists. They thought that there was little to be gained by agitating for the expansion of slavery, and there was still some antipathy between Jacksonians and the wealthy. A very large slaveowner might be more immune from popular agitation, and might support a more moderate course of action than his neighbors.

Party politics played a role, as Democrats came to lead the secessionist movement and others held back. Geography was also a factor: the largest landowners of the Mississippi Delta tended to support the Whigs, and the rest of the state tended to go Democratic, but the leaders of both parties were most often large landowners or connected to landowning families. Then, as now, one has to be skeptical of Democratic claims to be the "party of the common man," since the leaders of the party very often were anything but that.

South Carolina, the state that sparked secession and war, didn't really have a working party system. The same wealthy families tended to divide offices among themselves. While party differences might have blunted drives to secession elsewhere, their absence in South Carolina encouraged secessionist tendencies. In the state where the planter elite were most in control, secession went furthest and fastest, and that's no accident.

What you're seeing is a preference for direct democracy, expressed in plebicites and referenda, over representative democracy. One problem with direct democracy is that it tends to appeal more to the passions than to "rational, problem-solving" behavior. It can cause a lot of trouble that can't be undone. Another difficulty is that plebicites can be manipulated. It's alleged now that a Georgia vote taken as a mandate for secession was actually won by the other side.

And it's not at all clear that the idea of breaking away to form communities of like-minded people actually promotes individual liberty. Indeed, it may be a very bad thing for the rights of the persons when factions determined to have their own way in all things form their own breakaway nations.

Representative government has a way of bringing people of different opinions together to work out a way to live with each other. Where secession is enshrined as the main principle of government, people move to extremes, tear countries apart, and pass laws that are often to be more offensive and repressive than is otherwise the case.

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