Flag Ignites Battle in Southern Schools

It was a few days into the winter of ’96 when Jamie Kinley took his stand, pulled the Confederate battle flag tight over his back and seceded from Lakeside Middle School.

His jacket--a rebel flag with sleeves, the same kind his favorite uncle, Larry, wore when he was alive--broke the rules.

Suspended, the 14-year-old eighth-grader now studies at home. And his family and a loose coalition of lawyers whose cause is Southern heritage are talking about suing to win Jamie’s right to wear his flag.

“[The principal] has got a Purple Heart in his office from when he fought in the war. That’s what he believes in. I believe in my flag. He wouldn’t like it if I took his American flag,” Jamie said, his voice a shy drawl, his blue eyes obscured by shaggy brown bangs.

Across the South, educators trying to keep the explosive symbol out of their schools are meeting resistance from those who say a ban would be an attempt to conquer Southern identity.

For youths like Jamie, the Confederate flag is more than a symbol. It is how they tell the world who they are: Southern and unapologetic about a past they never knew.

The striking emblem--a bold blue X with white stars on a red background--rankles blacks and others who see it as a symbol of slavery and a modern-day call to bigotry. But Jamie doesn’t connect slavery to the flag or, for that matter, to the Civil War. For his family, the war between the states was fought against Northern domination and for states’ rights. They believe that criticism of the Confederate flag attacks the heritage of the war and the very traditions of the South.

Jamie is blurry on the details of that long-ago war, but he knows what the flag means to him: “I like it because I’m from the South.”

The emblem has a prominent place on Jamie’s skateboard and on his bedroom wall, where his pencil and crayon drawings, bumper stickers and oversize banners surround a photograph of Uncle Larry, a Confederate buff who died of a heart attack last year at age 34.

Students who wear the flag follow the example of their elders despite, or maybe because of, the pain it causes, said Dr. William Gibson, president of South Carolina’s chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. He has led marches protesting South Carolina’s practice of flying the flag over its Statehouse; it is the only state still doing so.

“They’re emulating adults, not just fathers and mothers, but legislators and governors,” Gibson said. “That’s the tragedy of it. It’s not just a child’s affair.”

In Anderson, flag clothing provoked two fights at the middle school and several threats in recent years, Lakeside Principal Don Saxon said at a school board hearing on Jamie’s suspension. One threat scared a student enough to bring a weapon to class, he said.

That’s reason enough to ban such clothing, said Bill Dillard, assistant superintendent in Anderson District 1. He refused to provide details of the incidents.

“We have a duty and an obligation to remove anything from a school campus that causes a disruption, so teachers can teach and students can learn,” Dillard said.

Jeff Massey, a Norman, Okla., lawyer who tracks cases for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says he gets at least one phone call each semester about a school official banning rebel flag clothing.

“They just ban it outright and think: ‘Well, that’s a racist symbol and we’re going to get rid of it.’ And it’s not. And it’s not going to go away,” Massey said.

Last year, Central High School in Knoxville, Tenn., banned wearing the flag. So did officials in Blackville, S.C., but a lawsuit by angry parents persuaded officials to reverse their decision.

“The South is unquestionably changing, and this probably comes up as part of the change,” said Shelby Foote, an author and historian of the Confederacy. “Thirty years ago, nobody would say, ‘You can’t fly the flag.’ Or you would have said it at great peril.”

But in the 1960s, Foote said, Southern moderates allowed the flag to be co-opted by “yahoos” who opposed integration and flew the banner while harassing blacks.

Jamie’s lawyers say Lakeside Middle School is violating the boy’s free-speech rights. But courts have let school officials ban symbols or messages that “substantially disrupt” the teaching environment or promote behavior the school doesn’t condone, said Perry Zirkel, an education law expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Jamie notes that his jacket has never prompted fights and that black schoolmates wear shirts bearing the names and likenesses of civil rights figures.

“They’re wearing their Malcolm X for the same reasons that I’m wearing mine,” Jamie said. “It’s their right.”