home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- NATION, Page 25American NotesTHE CONFEDERACYForget, Hell!
-
-
-
- The Civil War ended 126 years ago, but the Stars and Bars
- can still stir racial tension in the old Confederacy. Three
- years ago, 14 black state legislators in Alabama were arrested
- for attempting to remove the Confederate flag, symbol of a
- slaveholders' rebellion, at the state capitol. In 1983 black
- students at the University of Mississippi succeeded in forcing
- the school to abandon the flag as its emblem.
-
- This month a handful of white students at the James F.
- Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., which in 1970 banned use
- of the flag in official activities, began demanding the right
- to wear it on their clothes. What started as a violation of the
- school's code of conduct soon developed into a full-scale
- freedom of speech demonstration, with 80 students and parents
- parading the rebel banner on Duncan's East Main Street. Said
- 10th-grader Jamie Dill: "My daddy gave me this [flag]. I
- believe in what it stands for." By the time the flap subsided
- last week, about 100 students had been suspended.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-