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
When old Uncle Stand receives his pass allowing a temporary departure from the attic, it shall really be astonishing how he attempts to correctively revise the comments of that Freeper hating creep representing the "League of the South".
Nagasaki was the location of the Mitsubishi electrical works. That facility was as large and significant to the Japanese war effort as the Westinghouse East Pittsburgh Works or the General Electric Schenectady Works were to the US war effort.
Hiroshima was a major Japanese Army headquarters.
And throughout ever city in Japan, thousands of small "cottage" factories were established turning out arms and ammunition of all types.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know he is dead wrong. At it's peak there were 1.4 million confederate soldiers. Anyone who wants to suggest that 6 to 7 percent of those soldiers were black is a lunatic. There are no records whatsoever of Union soldiers facing black confederate soldiers, except for occasional stories and the one black confederate taken prisoner at Gettysburg. The problem I am finding on the web is that all those "dixie" websites throw out the same quotes without any references whatsoever. You can find the same kind of bias at the anti souther websites, so they aren't much better for gathering the truth. This story of Blacks fighting for the confederacy is highly questionable. I doubt there were that many Blacks interested in supporting the cause, and I certainly doubt there were many whites in the south interested in fighting side by side with blacks. The numbers I read are everything from 6 thousand to 90 thousand. There are many books of letters and diaries of both union and southern soldiers. I have ready many of those and not once did I come across any mention of black confederates. I find it hard to believe that something so unusual would not have been mentioned considering the fact they frequently talked about the black slaves (contraband) who crossed over the lines and caused logistical havoc for the union armies.
Well, in a certain sense it does. If the consitution guarantees you certain rights that not even the state is allowed to remove, then secession is in effect removing you from the protections guaranteed under the bill of rights. A state cannot vote to ignore the constitution and secession is in effect doing just that.
The north was definitely not fighting to end slavery and I doubt you could have found more than a handful of northern soldiers who would have said they were fighting for anything other than the preservation of the union. The confederate soldiers were among the most dedicated and patriotic soldiers this country has ever produced and they should be honored. If they were traitors I am not sure who they were traitors to, since they saw themselves as North Carolinians, Virginians, etc first and Americans second. I still think we can honor the confederate soldiers and how tenaciously they were fighting for their cause, which was a free and independent south, without trying to ignore the fact that slavery was a horrible institution and the fact the war ended it was a very good thing. My issue is with people who want to pretend slavery wasn't so bad or that slavery had absolutely nothing to do with the sectionalism that led to the war.
I think that is somewhat of an oversimplification. Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa etc were agricultural and thrived after the war. I still don't understand what "ways" the culture was changed. No one has yet explained in any clear fashion what was the culture of the south that made it unique? The idea of a southern culture, which I am sure existed, is wrapped in so many myths it is hard to seperate the real from the false. I honestly believe whatever culture was unique after the civil war has for the most part been watered down by outside influences and only exists in the minds of a few diehard Southerners.
Yeah, I saw all of those quotes on pro southern websites. Excuse me if I am highly skeptical. I can find opposing views on anti-southern websites and they are no more credible. I don't doubt there were cases where blacks fought for their masters, much like the fact that in Nazi concentration camps there were Jews who mistreated other jews and identified with their nazi guards. But, a few exceptions should not lead one to assume that anything less than a tiny percentage of blacks supported the confederate efforts. I have seen numbers quoted on the web of up to 90 thousand blacks wearing the confederate uniform, which is patently absurd. I am still researching that quote by Frederick Douglas and I am beginning to believe it is false. Not one website in which I found that quote provides a reference for where that quote originated. I am beginning to believe it is a myth.
And what will you say to those people in the state who don't want to lose the protection of the Constitution? Would you not be violating their constitution protections? On the other hand, if it were Massachusetts, I would not be too unhappy.
It might be just as accurate to say that without violent anti-slavery, there would have been no war.
Well, of course, had the north not cared one whit about slavery there wouldn't have been a war.
I can be anti-abortion without feeling the need to bomb abortion clinics. But if I do act violently on my moral convictions against abortion, that doesn’t mean that the residents of, say, Massachusetts must accept being the victims of my violent action, just because my intentions are honourable. They can object strenuously to the means I am using. And if a party assumes control of the Federal government, some of the members of whom have demonstrated a willingness to look the other way in prosecuting violent anti-abortion fanatics, then I believe that they have a legitimate complaint.
Now the analogy to the Republicans of 1860 is not a strict one. Lincoln, for example, had condemned John Brown’s violent means. But there were
But, I don't agree that it was the violence against anti-slavery that drove the South to secede. A bitter cold war had been brewing for years over the expansion of slavery into the new territories and states. My view is that given the long history of the sectionalism, war was virtually inevitable.
But why did it occur in 1860 and not at some earlier date? Why had sectional agitation not precipitated secession in 1850-51 or 1856? In 1850, the Nashville Convention was a secessionist fizzle. In 1856, Gov. Wise’s call on Southern Governor’s to meet at Raleigh to discuss a Southern response to a Fremont victory lead to only 3 Governors showing up (Va, NC, & SC), and they didn’t actually do anything.
I assert that the recent (i.e. post-1856 election) of violence in the political discourse over slavery made the issue relevant to a much broader Southerner audience that just slaveholders. Servile insurrection threatened every white Southerner, not just slaveholders. The winking and nodding by Republicans at violent anti-slavery activists indicated the future attitude of Republican officeholders towards the future perpetrators of anti-slavery violence. In a speech in Washington in 1860, W. L. Yancey made the following comments: “Suppose that party gets into power; suppose another John Brown raid takes place in a frontier state; suppose “Sharpe’s rifles” and pikes and bowie knives, and all the other instruments of warfare are brought to bear upon an inoffensive, peaceful and unfortunate people, and that Lincoln or Seward is in the presidential chair, where will then be a force of United States marines to check that band? Suppose that is the case – that the frontiers of the country will be lighted up by flames of midnight arson; as it is in Texas; that towns are burned; that the peace of our families is disturbed; that poison is found secreted throughout the whole country in immense quantities; that men are found to prowling about in our land distributing that poison in order that it may be placed in our springs and our wells; with arms and ammunition placed in the hands of this semi-barbarous people, what will be our fate? Where will be the United States Marshals to interfere? Where will be the dread of this General Government that exists under this present administration? Where will be the fear of the United States army to intimidate or prevent such movements? Why, gentlemen, if Texas is now in flames, and the peace of Virginia is invaded now under this administration, and under the present aspect of affairs, tell me what it will be when a “higher law” government reigns in the city of Washington?“
That kind of rhetoric resonated with Southerners, slaveholders and non-slaveholders. A government that could not (or would not) provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, etc. seems to have lost functional legitimacy in the eyes of a certain number of its citizens.
The depth of the animosity, and the level of hatred and mistrust meant that war, and a bloody one, was probably the only way this issue was going to be resolved and remove the sectionalism that would not let the nation grow. I think you can look back and find a million things that could have been done differently that might have prevented the war, and the top of my list was not electing Buchanan. On the other hand, I think war would have broken out eventually.
That strikes me as a pretty pessimistic view of human nature and conflict resolution.
Why do you suppose secession happened in 1860 instead of 1850 or 1856?
Northern States (Mass., Connecticut, RI, NY, Penn., NJ, etc.) got rid of slavery in their own good time, and in their own way.
SADLY, MANY people here think that freedom is ONLY for THEM. PITY!
have you read BLACKS IN BLUE & GRAY (fwiw, BIB&G was written by a black professor at Tuskegee University.)??? i think NOT, or you wouldn't be so filled with NONSENSE from the REVISIONISTS.
what is being taught today in MOST history departments is the LEFTIST/SOCIALIST, radical-REVISIONIST party line. no other viewpoints are acceptable and/or admitted to the classroom.
free dixie,sw
i took a diminutive of his war-name as a memorial to his valor/devotion & HONOR.
i am proud of him, as is every other Cherokee.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
you must have NO LIFE, like you had NOT in your previous guise.
fwiw, you aren't believed any more by anyone with an IQ above "room temperature". once you set yourself up as "the investigator" & "regulator of morals & truth" you had to be PERFECT.
and as i've said before your credibility went BOOM the first time someone here decided to look into your claims. (aren't you smart enough to know that SOME of what i post is INTENTIONALLY camouflage??? i'd guess you are NOT.)
btw,you keep posting that something (my double-barreled 12 guage) violated ARs. Army Regulations "are for the guidance of the commander" and as an old CG of mine said to a "9-button pantywaisted bureaucrat in a uniform", "Colonel,don't EVER tell me again that something is in violation of a regulation. i COMMAND this organization." (NOBODY was ever dumb enough to bring that particular subject up again. being the rebellious fellow that i am,i LOL.)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
no living person (least of all me. i am only the General's mule-holder.) is WORTHY to bear the full war-name of our tribe's principle hero.
i'm sure they kept you in the closet all the time, if the nonsense you post is what you wrote in college.
free dixie,sw
until you do, you'd look smarter to find a new ax to grind.
there are THOUSANDS of CSA pension records marked "coloured". do you think the states were too blind to know what color the CSA veterans, who were receiving those pensions, were???
free dixie,sw
Actually no, it wasn't. It was written by a guy whose background was as publisher of pulp magazines and comics.
They tried their best to get me in the closet, but finally gave up.
do you actually believe ANY of that bilge, OR do you hope SOMEONE else here is that dumb???
free dixie,sw
secession is NOT a power ceded to the central government. it is a power reserved to the STATES.
sorry, nice try, but NO cigar.
free dixie,sw
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