school censorship

[Blank Frank]

Apr 6, 2001 - 01:16 PM

            Confederate T-Shirts Spark
            Fashion Fight in Southern
            Schools
            By Russ Bynum
            Associated Press Writer

            RICHMOND HILL, Ga. (AP) - Zane Dunn wore a
            banned T-shirt to school and became a rebel with a
            Confederate cause.

            Like six other students at Richmond Hill Middle
            School, 14-year-old Zane was suspended for a day
            because of the Confederate flag on the shirt.

            More than a century after Lee surrendered at
            Appomattox and a few months after defenders of
            Confederate symbols lost battles in the Georgia and
            South Carolina statehouses, the fight over Southern
            heritage has moved to schoolhouses.

            "My Confederate ancestors, they died for this flag,"
            said 14-year-old Zane, whose mother bought him the
            shirt after another student was suspended. "I was
            born and raised in the South and I have to stand up
            for it."

            Educators say they have banned Confederate
            symbols to prevent racial violence.

            Parents and students from Richmond Hill, 18 miles
            south of Savannah, wore Confederate shirts and
            bandanas to a recent Bryan County school board
            meeting to protest the suspensions last month.

            In Cairo, Ga., rebel flag-waving parents picketed
            their school board after 50 students at Cairo High
            School and Washington Middle School were told to
            change their Confederate shirts.

            The American Civil Liberties Union has gotten
            involved in a similar controversy in Brunswick, Ga.,
            where the principal of Jane Macon Middle School
            wrote to parents saying the shirts caused "rumors of
            threats and impending fights."

            Cairo High principal Wayne Tootle said the actions
            do not stem from political correctness but from
            school shootings that have taught administrators to
            be wary of anything that might lead to violence.

            "School folks are in a very precarious situation,"
            Tootle said. "If they don't do something to try to
            prevent, and something happens, then the parents
            and news media will just lambast them for what they
            didn't do."

            In recent years, children wearing Confederate
            symbols, even as backpack patches, have been
            punished in Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia.

            In Georgia, the controversies followed the
            Legislature's move in January to change the state
            flag, which had been dominated by the Confederate
            emblem since 1956.

            School officials said bans on Confederate emblems
            have been in place for years, but the flag fight
            prompted students and parents to deliberately violate
            them.

            "Adults who want to keep arguing need to do
            something other than use our youngsters as a pawn
            in some political game," said Gary Russell,
            superintendent of the Bryan County school system.

            A lawyer representing parents in Richmond Hill and
            Cairo said the change in the Georgia flag has
            emboldened school officials.

            "The flag came down and they said, 'Oh, boy! It's
            open season on Confederate flags,'" said Kirk Lyons
            of the Southern Legal Resource Center, whose
            clients have included a former Ku Klux Klan grand
            dragon and the head of a North Carolina NAACP
            chapter.

            The classroom clashes have been a boon for Dewey
            Barber and his T-shirt company, Odum-based Dixie
            Outfitters, which has more than 200 shirt designs
            that incorporate the Confederate flag.

            "When they tell them they can't wear the rebel flag,
            they say, 'By gosh, we have the right of free speech
            and to our heritage!' And they buy more," Barber
            said.

            Dixie Outfitters shirts are so popular that some
            schools have banned them by brand name. Zane
            and his six fellow students all wore Dixie Outfitters
            shirts. Zane's shirt depicted a snarling, wild boar,
            with the Confederate emblem as a backdrop.

            Another Dixie Outfitters design shows just the flag's
            corners peeking from a basket of sleeping puppies.
            A third shirt depicts slaves working in a cotton field
            beneath the words "The Land of Cotton."

            No lawsuits have been filed in Georgia, but the state
            chapter of the ACLU has sent letters urging schools
            to lift the bans.

            Georgia ACLU legal director Gery Weber said the
            bans violate students' free-speech rights unless a
            school can show evidence that a shirt causes
            classroom disruptions.

            "It is hard to say a Confederate flag on a T-shirt is
            going to create that when, until recently, the Georgia
            flag had that on it and was placed in all the schools,"
            he said.

            Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without
            comment the appeal of an Ohio student whose
            T-shirts of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson were
            banned from school.

            The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had sided with
            the school, saying it could ban shirts that were
            offensive, even if they didn't cause a serious
            disruption.

            But the same appeals court last month revived a
            lawsuit by two Kentucky students who were
            suspended for wearing Hank Williams Jr. shirts with
            the Confederate flag. The court said the school
            needed to better explain its reason for the ban, such
            as whether there had been racial violence.

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAIYRP68LC.html