Lakeside bans Confederate flag

Augusta Chronicle ^ | 11/10/01 | Melissa Hall

[shuckmaster]

Lakeside High School officials are asking students not to wear clothing bearing the Confederate flag, at least for now.

While the Columbia County school system does not prohibit students from wearing the Confederate standard, recent racial tensions at Lakeside have prompted school officials to temporarily ban it on campus.

"On Tuesday we had five students involved in what we call actions preceding a fight; they were yelling at each other and squaring off," Lakeside Principal Victor Lee said. "Three of them were black, and two were white. The black kids came out with the fact that they felt like we were a racist school, with the kids wearing the Confederate flag, and they made an issue out of it."

The five students were suspended, Mr. Lee said. Nine other white students were identified throughout the day trying to promote the fight off-campus.

"As we got involved with those nine, I noticed that some of them were wearing the Confederate flag, and I asked them to work with me as we got through this issue and not wear the Confederate flag for a while," he said.

The students who were wearing the Confederate flag were asked to change their attire, said schools Superintendent Tommy Price.

"It is my understanding that they had other T-shirts to take their place and that they didn't have a problem with it," he said.

Students are generally not prohibited from wearing the flag at school.

"As long as there's no real problem caused by it, we don't have a problem with students wearing the Confederate emblem," Mr. Price said. "But given the disruption it's causing in the school, we felt like we needed to take this stance at this time."

[Redbob45]

What IS "Southern heritage"? It goes something like this, speech fascist.

Thanks for a wonderfully restrained and well-mannered response to "Illbay."
IF I had answered him, it would have been something more along the lines of
'P*ss on you and the mule you rode in on!'

But you saved me from having to do that.

[TomServo]

Southern Bump, Shuck....

[Illbay]

For me, Southern Heritage is pride in and respect for your family.

Sounds like Italians to me. Or Greeks.

It is grits or nothing for breakfast.

I like grits for breakfast. But it's an acquired taste.

It is knowing that Barbeque is a noun.

Again, that's fun, and I concur, but it isn't something on which to base a political initiative.

It's sitting in a tree freezing your butt off waiting for supper to walk by.

Some people like hunting. But my family never hunted, just weren't into it.

The most fanatic hunters I've ever known were folks in Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest.

Its country music and NASCAR.

Pretty much most folks in the U.S. like country music. Or stock-car racing for that matter.

For me the Confederate flag has always been around.

It has always been around for me, too, but it never occurred to me that it should be a "sacred" symbol.

From those corny license plates that had the fat old soldier saying "Ferget hell!" to the child t-shirts that read "I'm a little rebel", it wasn't racial, it was a statement that said, "I'm country, I'm from the South, and I'm proud."

Anybody can do that. But I find a symbol of rebellion against the United States of America, which nation I'm a proud citizen, to be an odd way to display that "pride".

I remember singing "Dixie" in elementary school music class. We didn't fly the Confederate flag every day back then.

We sang "Dixie," but we sang "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" and the national anthem, and other patriotic songs. "Dixie" had no special significance to my recollection. It was just a song (we also sang "Alabama, Alabama, We will aye be true to thee" which was about pride in our state).

My point I suppose is that there really isn't anything FUNDAMENTAL that distinguishes someone from the South vs. someone from anywhere else in the country--except that once some of the rich slaveowners thought it would serve their interests to protect their investment in slaves by seceding from the Union. They were rebels against the greatest Nation God ever put upon the earth.

I can be "proud" of many of those other things, but I don't claim rebellion against the United States of America as a part of my "heritage". That was a bunch of people with ideas and "values" that are so far from my own that I can't even begin to think like they do. I'm certainly not going to honor them by flying their flag.

[Illbay]

It is the belief that the culture and traditions of the Southern region of the United States are admirable, redeeming, and edifying.

Oh, like this?

Selected Quotations from 1830-1865

• Henry L. Benning, Georgia politician and future Confederate general, writing in the summer of 1849 to his fellow Georgian, Howell Cobb: "First then, it is apparent, horribly apparent, that the slavery question rides insolently over every other everywhere -- in fact that is the only question which in the least affects the results of the elections." [Allan Nevins, The Fruits of Manifest Destiny pages 240-241.] Later in the same letter Benning says, "I think then, 1st, that the only safety of the South from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union."
• Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America: "I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 106.]
• Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia: "There is not a respectable system of civilization known to history whose foundations were not laid in the institution of domestic slavery." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 56.]
• Richmond Enquirer, 1856: "Democratic liberty exists solely because we have slaves . . . freedom is not possible without slavery."
• Atlanta Confederacy, 1860: "We regard every man in our midst an enemy to the institutions of the South, who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing."
• Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina, in a speech to the House on January 25, 1860: "African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism." Later in the same speech he said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States." Taken from a photocopy of the Congressional Globe supplied by Steve Miller.
• Keitt again, this time as delegate to the South Carolina secession convention, during the debates on the state's declaration of causes: "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." Taken from the Charleston, South Carolina, Courier, dated Dec. 22, 1860. See the Furman documents site for more transcription from these debates. Keitt became a colonel in the Confederate army and was killed at Cold Harbor on June 1, 1864.
• Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina: "The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of slavery." [The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861), cited in Eugene Genovese's Consuming Fire (1998).]
• From the Confederate Constitution:
  • Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
  • Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
• From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
• From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
• Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
• On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom:
  • Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
  • A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
  • Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
• Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
• During the 1830's occurred the Gag Rule controversy in Congress, during which Southern politicians tried to block even the presentation of petitions on the subject of slavery. The following quotes come from speeches made in the House and Senate during this time, taken from William Miller's book, Arguing About Slavery:
  • John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina: "The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail."
  • James H. Hammond, Congressman from South Carolina: "Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth."
  • Hammond again, from later in the same speech: "the moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject [slavery], it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood."
  • Henry Wise, Congressman (and future governor) from Virginia: "The principle of slavery is a leveling principle; it is friendly to equality. Break down slavery and you would with the same blow break down the great democratic principle of equality among men."
• From the diary of James B. Lockney, 28th Wisconsin Infantry, writing near Arkadelphia, Arkansas (10/29/63): "Last night I talked awhile to those men who came in day before yesterday from the S.W. part of the state about 120 miles distant. Many of them wish Slavery abolished & slaves out of the country as they said it was the cause of the War, and the Curse of our Country & the foe of the body of the people--the poor whites. They knew the Slave masters got up the war expressly in the interests of the institution, & with no real cause from the Government or the North." [This diary is on-line at: http://userdata.acd.net/jshirey/cw186310.html.]

[Illbay]

Other Confederacy Debate Threads from the Past on FR:

Confederate-Americans Seek Civil Rights

Judge rules Va. must allow confederate license plates

Pro-Confederacy Group Seeks Reparations for Civil War Losses

The Klan and the Flag

VIRGINIA AND THE LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH

VOTE TODAY ON GEORGIA FLAG "COMPROMISE"

[Illbay]

I've lived here all my life. Kinda blows your truism, doesn't it?

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Actually, the ACLC has been involved in another case in GA regarding a student's Confederate something or other. Believe it or not, they were representing the student. I am not sure abut the outcome.

If that is what concerns the masses today in the wake of 9/11, we are in worse shape than I thought. Perhaps the principal should have handled it the old-fashioned way. Tell the whites and the blacks, he didn't give a tinker's damn about the way they felt; grow up, get over it.

[dixiemelody]

No one is asking you to think like we do or to fly the confederate flag. We only want people like you to quit trying to make us think the way you do and to stop infringing upon our right to fly the confederate flag if we so choose.

[dixiemelody]

Why must you live in the past? Get over slavery already. The last time I looked, slavery was over.

[jojonomo55]

This is one of the issues that will to continue to keep minorities out of the GOP. There is nothing wrong with celebrating your heritage, southern, northern, eastern or western, nothing wrong with pointing to the flag as a symbol of your pride, but you have to remember what that flag represents to many african americans. To them it is a symbol of rasicm and slavery. No amount explaining to them that that is not what it represents to you is going to matter to them. The flag is racist, period.

SO the only issue now is to decide how the party is going to react when this issue continues to pop up. Does the party and it's leaders denounce the flag? Show that they are sensitive to the concerns of African Americans? Try to get some of these people to actually consider voting GOP? Or do they continue to embrace the flag, poo pooing the concerns of African Americans, pretty much guaranteeing only about 10-20 percent of their vote?

[aomagrat]

Again, that's fun, and I concur, but it isn't something on which to base a political initiative.

We're on different roads here. I'm talking culture, you're talking politics. I'll agree that southern conservatives are pretty much like conservatives around the nation. But southern culture is pretty much unique. If I go to New York City or Los Angeles, I'll have a hard time finding a restaurant that serves grits or mustard based bbq. Back home in SC I can go into a gun shop and buy a handgun and walk out with it the same day. I can't do that in Los Angeles or New York. The stock car race in Los Angeles is always sold out, but those people in the stands aren't from LA. You can't even get the race on the radio in LA because no station will carry it. Back home I have my choice of stations. For me, the Confederate flag is a cultural symbol, not a political symbol.

[aomagrat]

And damn proud of it!

[Illbay]

If I'm German may I wear a Nazi uniform and carry a Nazi flag around with me in School?

[Illbay]

I'm always amused when neo-"Confederates" admonish others to "stop living in the past."

[shortstop]

In that case I would say you reside there. You don't live there. You ought to move back up north immediately.

[Illbay]

Not sure where you live, but I live in Texas. Except for brief periods due to employment obligations I've always lived below the Mason-Dixon line. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

But it is bizarre to me when "Southern culture" is put forward as some sort of "radical alternative." It's just a set of idiosyncracies, things we're comfortable with from having been reared this way. It's not necessarily "better" or "superior." Just comfortable.

[gunnedah]

Southern Heritage is many things to many people.Mine goes like this. I was born,raised and spent most of my life in the South.I have always abided by the law whether I considered it just or unjust.I have payed all my taxes and bills to the state and federal government and did everything required of me by them up to and being drafted. I have supported my government state and federal. I like grits,corn bread,Bar-B-Que and have always treated my elders regardless of their race with the upmost respect. I have honored and respected those who have fought and died in all wars this country was involved in whether or not I agreed with this countries stand or not.I also suspect there has been more tyranny carried out under the stars and stripes than was ever carried out under the Confederate Banner. I have never nor do not believe any of my anscestors owned slaves and if they did I condem and forgive them for it.I was not left anything from my ancestors in the way of money or land or anything of a material nature.I am 62 years old and retired. I never drew any of my military bebefits,unemployement or any subsidy of anykind up until now to which I now am drawing my social security. From everything I read I live in a small rural county where 300 men died in the Civil War and from all accounts none of them owned slaves and they fought for a cause for which their leaders here determined was correct and in most cases they fought to protect themselves from damn marauding Yankees like Sherman who burned,raped and pillaged their property.By the way in the Civil War I suspect most of the leaders of that time like the Kennedys and Clintons were directing this war from far away and were not hurt or injured other than from some movie or novel portraying such. Like most of us even today they probably didnt know the real truth behind everything they just answered the call of those leading.In the South and throughout this nation as a whole you still have those who are uneducated and held in poverty.But these are the ones who normally follow blindly and are more patriotic than those who are well educated and rob,steal and beat the system.It is a sad state of affairs when a baseball player can make more in one at bat than a citizen can in working a year but we can wear emblems honoring them or their teams at a very high cost .We can allow numbers to still go uneducated but yet pass them on through our systems of education just to use them as our gadiators.Now you and some politically correct outfit tell me I cant honor those less fortunate,uneducated or in a lot of cases forced to defend what they thought was right by wearing an emblem of a Flag they died for.I tell you and all like you to go to hell.You and those like you with your political correctness,diversity and anything goes mentality have brought America to its knees and she may just not recover this time.We have crumbled from within just like the twin towers.

[PatrioticAmerican]

Have you ever went to a southern schoool? I did. Socastee, near Myrtle Beach. The blacks acted worse than inner city blacks. Anyone even attempting to do good in school was a total outcast. I befriended one black girl I would definately call a lady. She tried so hard to be kind and sweet. She was beat up several times and was outcast by the other blacks. Being in the south, she was also not too welcome by the whites. Malcom was a hero, and the Confederate flag was for rednecks. Glad I was only there for a short time.

[CWRWinger]

What did the other side give up? Did the school system offer to suspend affirmative action? Did they offer to expel the NEA?

Enough is enough. This school needs to be picketed with Confederate flags and signs until they change their attitude.

[hangin' chad]

You are an ignorant redneck.

Hey Hans, why don't you go back to Holland and stick a wooden shoe where the sun don't shine. Obviously, Aomagrat has some understanding of Southern culture which you don't. Seems to me you're the ignorant one. To most Southerners the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of our resistance to an invasion of our homeland during the War of Northern Aggression. A war which had much more to do with economics than slavery. For many decades after the war the South was treated as an economic colony of the North. That's why we will "never forget" and continue to fly the flag.