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
OTOH my wife's parents (also old south) took up the gauntlet of civil rights in the fifties. My wife tells me of the phone calls she would answer as a child: "n####r lover" SLAM!
It was an ugly time.
In the last 20 years I have been to a dozen funerals at what are still "black" churches in Georgia. Some of those funerals were for people who worked for my family for years, people I have worked for, with and had work for me, and dozens of black people who I would jump in front of a freight train for.
Some of us are without race now. Would I want my daughter to marry a black man? For her happiness and peace, of course. But I am like anyone else, I want my grandchildren to look like me. You probably do too. One of these days we may not even consider that but today we do.
Anyway. I am glad you're her and I appreciate your opinion.
I'll bite. The Declaration of Independence, is that the document whose most repeated line goes something like "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," Is slavery an institution that facilitates Life, Liberty and Happiness?
I've read it a dozen times. An Oppressive government is not enough, it clearly states that the government to be overthrown must be an "absolute Despotism" or "absolute Tyranny". This is a much higher test than oppression imo. The Declaration goes on to list 25 to 30 specific greviences against king George III that are the facts as to why the current colonial governing situation must be eradicated.
I'll wager that you cannot find a mere 3 of these greivances to be applicable to the South's situation before the war. Two would even surprise me.
The South's biggest mistake was not overthrowing the government as you suggest. If congress/president was so oppressing the Confederate States, why in the heck didn't they march straight to Washington after kicking arse at Manassas to open the war?
I'm sorry too....that was very gracious.
I prefer uniforms at school too for my own children....which is the case at most parochial and conservative private schools here in nashville
I perused your posts...the mulatto argument was interesting....the Spanish root is about mules as in hybrids not beasts and there is an arabic root too which is strikingly similar and means an arab mixed with non-arab....but I'm not sure anyone knows for sure
Having lived in Haiti, latin America and West Africa and being raised in the American South, I have seen the word all my life and never saw it as racist there or any of the other locales...it is a part of the accepted dialect at all of those places and is quite accepted.
But, I believe it may be considered derogatory in the UK...at least according to Wikpedia FWTW.....I had a Jamaican girlfriend once and they used the term as well without derision....or they simply said "light skinned" or "Jamaican White" and everyone knew the meaning..
Who knows....it's more colorful than "mixed race" for sure
No, I was quoting another poster, take it up with SunnyUsa.
I was watching the Beverly Hillbillies in their first run back in the 60s when I was 10.
1. Protection by northern Republicans in public office (i.e. Gov. Kirkwood of Iowa and Gov. Dennison of Ohio) of men (i.e. Owen Brown, Francis Merriam, Barclay Coppoc) wanted for trial in Virginia for their crimes in connection with the Harper's Ferry insurrection. These northern Republican office holders used their offices to shield fugitives from justice from prosecution, because these fugitives were anti-slavery murderers.
2. Federal expenditures, with no constitutional basis, for things like fishing bounties for New England fishermen.
3. State laws passed to deliberately thwart a constitutional provision for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
Or did you mean to imply that the list of greivances on the Declaration of Independence is definitive and exhaustive? Are there no other potential grievances which might authorize a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another?
If the South went to war for slavery one has to wonder why. The practice was legal according to the Constitution at the time.
Small farmers had been buying land for themselves for a long time. I'm not talking about newly-freed slaves.
Yes, I have heard that and the history is dubious at best. Aside from those who were either forced into it, or did servant type work as slaves for the Confederate army, I question the numbers. I don't doubt there were a few and no doubt they were offered their freedom for fighting alongside the south. The fact they could earn their freedom by fighting for the south should not be something any defender of the South should want to brag about. It begs the question of why they were in bondage in the first place. What is a more telling number is the huge number of slaves crossing over the union lines in order to gain their freedom. Any suggestion a slave fought for the South voluntarily because he wanted to be a slave is absurd. You know, the South lost the war and that is a very, very good thing. All these claims that the slaves were happy or that this war was not at it's core about the issue of slavery is simply an attempt by Southerners to justify something that can't be justified.
With regard to 1. I agree that Ohio refused to give up Brown and Merriam to Virginia through writ. I have a problem with Virginia's standing in this. The feds sent Lee with Marines immediately in and he ended the raid by capturing or killing almost all involved. The captured survivors of the Harpers Ferry raid we're immediately tried, convicted and HUNG for treason before the war started. The treason was due to the take over of the federal armory there, not the murders these men committed in town before, during and after the raid. Virgina was essentially declaring this act an invasion against the State itself and that Ohio, Iowa and other states were involved because the abolutionists were from there. One can argue that the Federal goverment had ultimate jurisdiction and not Virginia, and that the Federal government acted swiftly to protect Virginian's life and property.
2. Is legitimate back then, but completely unrecognizable in today's America, as everything the feds do now involves the distribution of pork.
3. One could argue that Ohio is no more obligated to accept Virginia's fugitive slave laws back then, any more than Ohio today has to accept Mass. homosexual marriage law. And if Ohio wants to pass a law refusing to accept or acknowledge homosexual unions from other states, I believe it is within their rights.
The great irony of all this is the fact that even though this war was fought to protect States rights, with legitimate arguments on both sides, all the States lost most of their rights during this war, never to see them return, even to this day.
Good point, thank you. I should have remembered watching a TV show about an Ohio and a New York National Gaurd unit suffering heavy casualities as a unit in Iraq.
diplomat, thanks for the reply.
The Harper's Ferry convicts were charged with (convicted of and executed for) treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia (not the US), murder and inciting servile insurrection. Now, as for treason against the Commonwealth, one of the accused (Brown, himself, if memory serves) said that he never owed any allegiance to Virginia, so being charged with treason to her was inappropriate (Brown had a certain point here, I believe). But murder and inciting insurrection were serious crimes, and the Governors Kirkwood and Dennison were dead wrong to refuse the extradition requests from Governor Letcher. What this conduct meant was observed by the Staunton (Va.) Vindicator in February, 1860, when that paper editorialized as follows: "The conduct of the Governor of Iowa (says the Richmond Dispatch) is remarkable for its duplicity, and shows to us of the South, what we have to expect from Northern officials, elevated to power by the sectional party of the day."
The fact that Northern Republican office holders (not just loud-mouthed radicals in private life) had done this was very troubling. Would a Seward or Lincoln Administration take a similar stance in regards to perpetrators of future armed invasions of the South?
And you are correct on one other point. A different extradition failure spawned an appeal to the Federal bench around the same time. In Kentucky vs. Dennison, the Court ruled that the Governor had a moral obligation to extradite fugitives from justice, but that the Federal Court had no authority to issue a writ of mandamus ordering a State Executive to do his duty.
As for the idea that the Federal government had ultimate jurisdiction I am not sure what Federal laws the raiders broke at Harper’s Ferry. I’m not sure there was even a Federal law against murder back then. That would have been a State law only. And the Federal government acted swiftly to protect Virginians’ life and property, but apprehension and prosecution are two separate things.
2. You are right about pork, but it was one of the grievances of which Southerners complained. If ever there was a real-world example of the slippery slope, this issue is it. Is there any topic that the Federal government considers to be beyond its purview?
3. The fugitive slave law was a Federal not a State law. It was enacted pursuant to Article IV, Section 2 of the US Constitution. Lots of States had laws that were specifically designed to thwart Article IV, Section 2. Of course, these laws were unconstitutional, but they did serve as examples of how Republicans intended to run the show, once they got the Senate and White House. Some Republicans had already shown that they were willing to use their offices to protect murderers. What were Southerners supposed to make of that fact?
Of course, if a Northern State found enforcing the fugitives from labor clause to be so repugnant, they could have seceded. Then they would be free to ignore the Fugitive Slave Law and welcome escaped slaves with open arms.
Or for that matter, anything which supports the gangsta/hip hop lifestyle.
Fascinating that Virginia got final jurisdiction for treason to me because the place John Brown attacked was the Federal Armory in Harpers Ferry, one of only 2 in existance at the time in the USA. Plus, President Buchanan had ordered Colonel Robert E. Lee and the marines to Harper's Ferry as soon as word got to Washington.
Brown planned on using these weapons to arm the slaves that were going to supposedly heed his call for armed insurection and rebellion. Problem was, none (or just a couple) of the slaves joined him and he murdered more who didn't join.
So back in the day, the Federal courts allowed the States to handle treason. Too bad we can't get Pelosi extradited today.
I guess they don't teach the War Between the States in that school.
I don't think that Virginia got final jurisdiction, they got initial jurisdiction. I suppose it is possible that if Brown had been acquitted, or sentenced to time in prison instead of hanging, the Federal government might have tried him as well (I haven't checked the ante-bellum Federal Statute books for a Federal treason statute).
Brown was intending to overthrow the entire United States' government, and all the State governments. He had in his possession (back at the Kennedy farm, if memory serves) of a new draft Constitution of the United States, that he and his accomplices had drafted in Chatham, Canada West in the summer of 1858. Virginia was just the first place he intended to overthrow. Maps, also recovered at the Kennedy farm, showed his planned area of operations: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, with symbols on counties with large black populations. He was not just trying to run off slaves. When he said that before his trial and when his supporters said so in front of Congress, they were lying, and they knew they were lying.
On a relevant sidenote, in Kentucky vs Dennison, the Ohio Attorney General advised Gov. Dennison not to extradite a criminal to Kentucky because slave-stealing wasn't a crime in Ohio, even though the Constitution clearly says that the criminal will be delivered up to the State having jurisdiction over the crime. This was just another example of how northern Republicans were probably going to run things, once they got in power. If I were a Southerner in 1860, even a non-slaveowning Southerner, I'd be very nervous about such a bunch being in charge of the Congress and the White House.
The reason it was NOT a *civil war* or revolution, but a War for Independence, just as the American colonies of 1776 did not intend to overthrow King George and the existing government of Great Britain at the time, and as per the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 11 November 1965.
I would prefer a civil action for slander, which in some states might be actionable as libel, since the obliquy is found on a print medium. But in some states, there's also a criminal offense provided.
In any event, there's a federal statute that applies:
United States Code, Title 18 U.S. Criminal Code, Section 242:Deprivation of rights under color of law
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Whether or not federally prosecuted, that federal statute could be used in filing a state charge of *Abuse of Public Employment* against school administrators. And if I recall correctly, the Texas racketeering statute includes multiple commissions of official misconduct as felony racketeering. The salary of a public employee has been held to be *property* as defined in the statute.
Texas Penal Code, 1.07(41)Abuse of Public Employment
A public servant commits an offense if he or she, with intent to obtain a benefit or with intent to harm or defraud another, intentionally or knowingly violates a law relating to the public servant's office or employment, or misuses government property, services, personnel, or any other thing of value, belonging to the government, that has come into his or her custody or possession by virtue of his or her office or employment.
Not at all, per the constitutional definition of Article III, Section 3:
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
The secession of the southern states was lawful; or else the secession and following U.S. statehood of West Virginia from the Confederate state of Virginia was a constitutional violation as well, making Lincoln a perjurer unfit to hold his office, per Article IV,Section 3:
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.Both de facto and de jure, Virginia was not a state of the United States following her secession- or else West Virginia is not lawfully a state, and all laws and several constitutional amendments passed since her unlawful ascension to statehood voted on by congressional representatives from that state are void, null and invalid.
I don't think the federal government wanted to go there.... .
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