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.
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