Posted on 01/06/2006 12:05:39 PM PST by stainlessbanner
BURLESON — Two North Texas high school students who were kicked out of class for displaying rebel flags vow to take their fight to court. They said they are proud of their heritage, but Burleson High School education officials maintain the Confederate symbol is offensive.
Ashley Thomas remembered how it all started. "Principal comes up and says, 'You've got to get rid of your purse... it's racist."
Ashley and Aubrie McAllum both received purses patterened after the Confederate battle flag from their parents for Christmas. Both girls decided to take their presents to school.
"I don't have 'KKK' written on me or anything; it's just a purse," Aubrie said. "Doesn't have anything to do with what color you are."
The students were asked to leave their purses with the principal; they elected to leave school after calling their parents.
Ashley was sent home three times this week. "I'm at the point where I really don't know what to do," she said. "I want to keep going to school and get my education, but this is my life. I was born and raised in the South. Why is the flag so bad?"
Here's the answer, from Burleson ISD spokesman Richard Crummel: "It's a violation of the dress code," he said. "We don't want students to wear anything that might cause a disruption, and that symbol has done that in the past."
"Then that's a heritage violation on her, on me... on all of us," said Aubrie's father, Rick McAllum. "So we can push it."
McAllum belongs to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Ashley's mom, Joni Thomas, is from New York. But the parents of both girls praised their daughters, and vowed to fight.
"I'm hiring a lawyer," Thomas said. "I'm going all the way with it, because I think it's wrong."
Burleson High School, with a 2,200 student enrollment, is about 90 percent white, 8 or 9 percent Hispanic. There are very few African Americans.
"We want to be sensitive to everyone; make it comfortable in school for all our students," Crummel said.
Both girls said they have never been in trouble and don't want trouble now.
But they don't want to back down, either.
School officials know controversy often follows the Confederate flag, and they will not let it in.
The girls as of Friday, decided to go back to school
No I'm not, if the school does not have an official uniform code, they have no right to do anything. What the school did here was take an abritrary action with no policy in writing to back them up. The uniform policies the schools have here are different because they set in stone what's permissable and what's not, though on out-of-uniform days, Dixie Outfitter clothing is usually permitted, and alot of people around here still put the Battle Flag on their class rings.
after the SCV won the TN case on this VERY same issue, you'd think that school districts would "smarten up"!
obviously, the Burleson ISD didn't get the message & NOW they will PAY two young ladies for violating their civil rights.
serves them right, imVho.
free dixie,sw
MANY still do.
free dixie,sw
The slavery issue was a good moral underpinning for the North. In addition the North knew that Southerners would have to bear the brunt of social adjustments.
PLEASE note that NOBODY was offended enough to say anything. it was the UNelected school administrators that did this particular STUPIDITY!
free dixie,sw
I was under the impression that Jackson was an instructor at VMI or the Citadel or somesuch. He wasn't rich, or a member of the Plantation Class, IIRC.
And that's not to say some of the rich didn't fight for their cause. Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, was a wealthy slave trader, who was destituted by the war after spending his fortune in support of the Confederacy.
If burning the American flag is protected speech, then what's wrong w/girls and their Confederate flag purses? There are times when it's better for "educators" to turn a blind eye to minor PC things and get on w/their primary job of TEACHING students. Frankly, I am offended that they'r not doing their primary job.
Jews also fought for Apartheid, and against it.
i am pleased & humbled to use a diminutive of his WAR-NAME!
free dixie,sw
Should a T-shirt stating "If your great-grandfather was a Confederate, you're a descendant traitor." be banned from this school if the current dress-code doesn't specifically prevent it?
free dixie,sw
When you're in a hole, it's best to stop digging.
No, because if that occurs in a public school environment in the South, then likely, a few kids will meet up with that kid after school and.....
I'm not condoning violence, I'm just saying what would happen. That's why you'll never see anyone where something like that.
So it's OK to offend a couple black kids, just don't offend the descendant of a single Confederate because that will likely end in an after school brawl. Not sure which group in this debate should be more offended by your position.
You do see the hypocrisy of your position I hope?
There were plenty of American exports of the time besides cotton and tobacco. Whale oil out of Nantucket and metal from Northern mines, for example. Also, Great Britain, where the great textile mill industry was at the time, had an interest in fostering cotton imports from her own colonial areas, like Egypt and India. You could as well say the tariffs aided American industry at the expense of Great Britain's.
The real question is why the South never tried to develop their own domestic textile industry. Or any other significant manufacturing, for that matter. One of the main reasons the South lost was the inability to manufacture the goods needed in the face of the blockade.
If I posted every slavery comment made by Southern leaders as the cause for secession, I would be still posting 25 years from now. So, I'll limit myself to the opening text of the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.
Georgia: "The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery ..."
Mississippi: "In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery ..."
South Carolia: "The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States ..."
And so on. Geez for slavery not being an issue, those seceding states sure dwell on it a lot in the "declarations of independence". They talk about it a heck of a lot more than they talk about tariffs. I can't belive we're even arguing about this obvious fact.
This yankee says, "You go girls!"
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