HISTORY CHANNEL CAVES TO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN GEORGIA

(ATLANTA - November 29, 2010) The nationally syndicated cable television History Channel has made the controversial decision to force cable television companies, including Comcast and Charter, to pull ads paid for by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Georgia commemorating the Sesquicentennial (150th Anniversary) of the War Between the States.

The series of twelve television commercials by the Sons of Confederate Veterans is part of a statewide radio and television campaign aimed at commemorating the anniversary of the late War Between the States and educating the public on Georgia's important role and the historical causes of the War. All twelve television commercials, as well as a companion series of radio commercials, are still broadcasting across the state of Georgia; and an entire slate of additional commercials are already in production for 2011.

The commercials came under scrutiny of the History Channel when a little-known liberal Internet site began attacking the Sons of Confederate Veterans for commemorating the War and, subsequently, also the History Channel for allowing the commercials to broadcast in their programming.

Vice-president Nancy Alpert of A&E Television, the parent company of the History Channel, gave the following explanation of her decision to ban the historical ads: "The subject matter of each of the SCV ads, plus the actual language... is well beyond our guidelines for any advertising on AETN." Alpert cited her opinion that the ads violated History Channel guidelines by quoting, among other things, a statement in one commercial that the war was "Not a 'civil war' fought to take over the United States, as it is called in history books today, this was a war... against an aggressive invasion by federal troops." She also complained that one of the commercials related to the causes of the War stated that the South seceded in part because "Northern congressmen were able to vote themselves virtually anything they wanted, using Southern tax money, while the South was powerless to stop it."

The commercials clearly offer a different point of view than that which is usually presented by documentaries on the History Channel; yet the channel has purported in the past to be an outlet which offers competing, and even controversial, opinions about historical events. Speaking on behalf of the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans which paid for the commercials to run, Division Commander Jack Bridwell had this to say, "We find it more than interesting that the History Channel has no problem airing shows with controversial theories about history, including more than one show which speculates that extraterrestrial aliens in UFO's somehow redirected human history, and yet the same channel does not see the value in allowing a non-profit, educational organisation to present the Southern view of the causes for the War."

As the organisation founded in 1896 and directly descended from the original United Confederate Veterans, the Sons of Confederate Veterans is charged in their initial charter with teaching the historical reasons for the South's heroic stand against overwhelming odds in the War. The charge given at the organisation's founding states, "To you, Sons of Confederate Veterans, we will submit the vindication of the cause for which we fought; To your strength will be given the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his virtues, and the perpetuation of those principles he loved and which made him glorious and which you also cherish."

With the Sons of Confederate Veterans representing more than 100,000 Southerners across the country, the Georgia Division of the SCV announced today that it is launching a campaign to educate the general American public about the censorship and hypocrisy of the A&E Network and particularly the History Channel. It is estimated that the A&E Network stands to lose several hundred thousand dollars over the course of the next two quarters as their advertisers are barraged by former viewers who are unhappy with this pandering to "political correctness," particularly across the South.

Interviews and statements related to the Sons of Confederate Veterans may be arranged via Announcements@RayMcBerryEnterprises.com or by calling 1-866-SCV-in-GA.

NINTH ANNUAL ABBEVILLE SCHOLARS’ CONFERENCE

THE SOUTH AND AMERICA’S WARS

The Cape Fear Club
Wilmington, North Carolina
February 24-27, 2011

TOPIC: Southerners are rightly known as a people who value the military arts; have excelled in them; and have been inordinately represented in America s military history. What is not so apparent is the strong, if not predominant, tradition of Southern opposition to foreign war. This view of the military is defensive, embodying the virtue of loyalty and the duty to respond to offenses against honor. Southern leaders have perhaps been less motivated than other Americans by the ideological rationales given for U.S. wars ( freeing the slaves, saving the world for democracy, etc.). Many respectable and eloquent Southern voices have been raised against most U.S. wars, and on grounds different from those of the anti-war left.

“American Colonial Resistance to British Imperial Wars,” Carey Roberts.

“John Randolph versus the War Hawks,” John Devanny.

“Nathaniel Macon’s Resistance to the War of 1812,” Troy Kickler

“John C. Calhoun: Anti-Imperialist,” Clyde Wilson.

“Virginia’s Reluctant Secessionists, Dutiful Sons, Fierce Warriors,” Jonathan White.

“Southern Critics of American Wars and American Empire: 1865-1912,” Joseph Stromberg.

“The South and America’s Wars for Righteousness,” Richard Gamble.

“Gnostics of War: Richard Weaver’s Traditionalist Conservative Critique of Modern Warfare,” Jay Langdale.

“Perpetual War for Perpetual Union: Kendall and Bradford on Lincoln’s Imperial Rhetoric,” Daniel McCarthy.

“Other Southern Resistance to Foreign Wars,” Roundtable Discussion.

“Why Southerners Fight and Why Southerners Don’t Fight,” Roundtable Discussion.

Cost, Accommodation, Tours: Lectures in The Cape Fear Club, a private club, tracing its origins to1852, and having no fear of cigars. Rooms in the Wilmingtonian hotel, a short walk away. If booked before December 24, rates are $79 (Thursday) and $115 per night (Friday and Saturday), for a double or single. Ask for the special rate at (910) 343 1800. Other hotels ranging from $53-99 are within 3 miles of the Cape Fear Club. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org.Conference fee of $125 includes two suppers, one dinner, and tour. http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org. Partial scholarships available for students. Make and mail checks to Abbeville Institute, P.O.Box 10, McClellanville, S.C. 29458.

Wilmington was the last port of the Confederacy. Walking tours of Confederate Wilmington are offered. A short drive away is Fort Fischer under whose protective guns the blockade was run Queries: contactus@abbevilleinstitute.org, or (843) 323 0690.

A SOUTHRON THANKSGIVING MUSE--REMEMBERING WHO WE ARE

The following is written for Southron Agrarians, who with some clarity, “Remember Who We Are.” If you are an American Fabian or Nazi Socialist or liberal Christian agnostic (an oxymoron) you will not understand the following and should not read it.

The descendants of “Christendom's Last Stand” are alive and awakening. Southrons are still a separate and distinct people of North America in spite of our subjugation, the repeated use of military force against our institutions, our wives, our children and their schools and their school buses, and repeated pogroms of indoctrination to the New World Socialist Order beginning with the "successful" Executive-Military Coup (a second American revolution) executed by Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans of New England.

The work of genocide against our people and our culture is so thorough that the once very revered term "Southron" is not recognised by our "Spell Check" computer programs. The surviving title "Southerner" is made out to be an "anathema" by the propaganda moguls at CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NPR, CBS, BBN, CBN, TIME-WARNER, ABC, local and state newspapers, and by every local ad-rag that is pushed as “free media” sources on our communities. The giant media monopoly is still owned and or managed by northern Maxists and their minions.

The defining racist evils of American (meaning New England Yankee) Nativists who were anti-Roman Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-all non-whites were forced down the throats of Southerners during "Reconstruction" and yet resisted by most in the better class of Southerners. Now the descendants of the same Deep North New Englander's have a new continuation of their pogrom's of anti-Southern institution's, anti-traditionalism, anti-Christian, anti-God, and anti-liberty Marxism.

I am thankful today that God has preserved a core of intelligent stout-hearted Southron's and a remnant of old-time Democrat Copperheads who now are seeing and understanding the travesty of the American (Yankee) system of intolerant egalitarian mono-culture that has been forced on them for more than 150 years.

These Amero-Fabian Marxists permit our government schools to teach the meaning of the Qur'an, but not the Bible. They permit Muslims to stop traffic on the busiest streets of our largest cities to pray to the moon-god of Arabia, but do not permit prayer to the God of Christians in the hallowed-halls of American indoctrination centers, the public schools.

Many American's and those of the more traditional western Christian cultures whose churches and theologies have fallen into un-use and disrepair are waking-up and will soon stand-up as they realise that no compromise with the egalitarian wolves of modernity will permit their very real diversity to survive. Socialism, Communism and their Democrat and Republican stooges are not tolerant, they are not God-fearing and they do not tolerate Christians nor permit them a legitimate place at the grand table of American public discourse.

There is a Southron remnant whose "American Dream" is "not about the economy" of the redistribution of wealth to the Fascist Global Bankers, to the Future Marketeers and the Global Cartel of Industrialists. The Southron view of life has to do with 1) their God and 2) their families. Government is third in line and only useful when it does not interfere with numbers one and two.

The Southron view of government has to do with Freedom, Independence and Liberty. There is such a remnant in the USA and it is clear that the current national government of the USA no longer represents them. The South is "Remembering Who God is (and He is not the U.S. government) and who we are!" God bless the Southrons.

tmanning1@triad.rr.com

The Spiritual Cause and Effect of the War to Prevent Southern Independence, part 2

The Yankee/Industrial/Progressive/Expansionalist system is a linear one. On a micro level, the idea is for the individual to get a better job, a better house, a better car, a better education all in the pursuit of greater wealth in the form of material acquisitions. On a macro level, the state expands itself through unconstitutional acquisitions and wars abroad.

The agrarian /Southern ante-bellum system is cyclic. It is grounded in the seasons and all of nature aiming to provide a lifestyle that blends into harmonic balance with all of creation. Its goal is to provide sustenance and shelter. Thomas Jefferson, in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, writes : “When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.” Here, he clearly states the founding source not only of our independence from England but also for our system of government.

Jefferson further expounds his beliefs in this letter to James Madison:

“The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.”

It should be of no surprise that, by the suppression of the agrarian South by the Federal army and the consequent crushing of Southern thought and culture, the founding principals of our country have been eliminated. Today there is virtually no understanding or practice, in mainline culture or in our Temples for Rulers, of the Powers of the Earth, the Laws of Nature or of Nature’s God.

The end result is that we have become that from which we declared out independence.

Perhaps no other principle has suffered more than that of freedom itself. Where our founders in 1776 and 1861 thought of freedom as simply being left alone, today it is routinely accepted that to be free means to be taxed, permitted, regulated, inspected, documented, numbered, photographed, licensed, policed, planned, zoned, spied on, lectured to and lied to. In short, the Yankee culture believes that freedom is something granted by the government to its people rather than the other way around.

We have become literally and figuratively a nation of suckers. By literally feeding on the labors of our own citizens and of the Earth and Creation we attempt to maintain an ever expanding “economy” based on the doctrine of more. Figuratively by swallowing the propaganda that “they” hate us because of our “freedom,” that we must kill for peace and that to protect ourselves we must support the wars and foreign occupations of an ever-increasing imperialist regime that started four-squarely with the destruction of our homeland in the mid nineteenth century. (to be continued)

dware4dixie@gmail.com

“YANKEE BABYLON” BY MACDONALD KING ASTON IS NOW AVAILABLE.

Orange Beach, Alabama - The hard-hitting and long-awaited Yankee Babylon is available immediately from The Fire Eater website (www.fireeater.org). To order just click on the link at the top of the page. (You can order autographed copies as well.)

From the publishing summary:

“Secularised and hidden away in a thousand useless history books, brimming with the Big Lie of the Yankee Myth, the myth of Lincoln, of perpetual war, of the holy dollar, and of the Puritans’ City upon a Hill, is a real America. You won’t find the real America in your history books, for those books are filled with the propaganda of the Yankee and his mythology. Casting a cold eye on the “Evil Twins” of the 1860s and 1960s, Yankee Babylon ruthlessly exposes the truth of both who we are and how we got here: not to a free republic of free men and women, but to an American Empire. To a Yankee Babylon.”

Yankee Babylon is unique in its sphere of historical, cultural, and ideological analysis. The author aims at nothing less than a complete exposé of the propaganda spread from New England from the 1600s to modern times. In exposing the Yankee culture, the author uses two timeframes to show how the "Yankee Myth" penetrated all of American culture: the 1860s and the 1960s. The 1860s show the results of the "great inversion" of the Puritan to the Yankee and answers the question: "Who are we?" The 1960s show the Yankee mythology in its modern garb and answers the question: "How did we get to where we are today?" Tackling diverse topics such as American exceptionalism, "the Civil War," propaganda, literature, the culture of New England and its supremacy by violence, Yankee Babylon also answers a question barely mentioned in historical studies: "Who and what is a Yankee?"

With an extensive bibliography and index, Yankee Babylon relies upon facts, not ideology, to answer the troubling questions of our times.

To follow Yankee Babylon, you can go to the Yankee Babylon page on Facebook or to the Fire Eater site (www.fireater.com). Email questions to yankeebabylon@gmail.com.=

THE FIGHTING BISHOP

The Confederacy was blessed with many great generals during the War for Southern Independence. The names Lee, Jackson, Forrest, Stuart, Cleburne and so many more come quickly to mind. One of my favorite Confederate generals, though, is not as well known as many of his cohorts and his ascendancy to the position of one of the highest-ranking of Confederate military leaders was, at best, unexpected.

Not that Leonidas Polk did not come from a family of which one would not expect greatness. Quite the opposite! Leonidas Polk's grandfather, Thomas Polk, was a soldier of the American Revolutionary War and also the founder of the University of North Carolina; his father, Colonel William Polk, was a wealthy planter who had also fought in the Revolution and his cousin, James Knox Polk, was merely the eleventh President of the United States.

What made the military success of this scion of an illustrious Southern family so remarkable was that Leonidas Polk had chosen to spend his life as a man of the cloth - even attaining the position of bishop in the Episcopal Church. Throughout his tenure as general, though, Bishop Polk never forgot his role as a Christian leader. He was one of that score of Confederate men of faith most responsible for the great spiritual revival that swept through the Confederate Army.

Leonidas (emphasis on the second syllable, "on") was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1806. As he reached college age he first enrolled at the University of North Carolina. His father soon convinced him, however, to accept an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point where Polk did well finishing 8th in the Class of 1827 which also included two cadets named Jefferson Davis and Albert Sidney Johnston.

While at West Point, Leonidas was strongly influenced by the academy chaplain, Charles McIlvaine, who baptized the young cadet and strongly influenced his decision to enter the ministry. Leonidas resigned from the military to enter seminary in Virginia and was ordained in 1831.

Polk had married Frances Devereaux in 1830 and in 1832 moved his family to Maury County, Tennessee to join several brothers who had already settled there. He settled on a portion of the extensive holdings of the Polk family and built a fine mansion called "Ashwood Hall". It is recorded that he eventually became the largest slaveholder in Maury County. He and his brothers also built a beautiful church near Mt. Pleasant very near to the plantations.

In 1838 Leonidas was appointed Missionary Bishop of the Southwest and in 1841 became the first Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana. During his tenure in the diocese of Louisiana, the number of Episcopalian churches in the state grew from 3 to 35.

Bishop Polk had a dream to establish an institution which would become a national university for the South, patterned after Oxford and Cambridge, which would educate young Southern gentlemen who would uphold Southern values. He described this university as " a home for all arts and sciences and of literary culture in the Southern states". He led the effort to establish the University of the South and in 1860 personally laid the cornerstone for this institution at Sewanee, Tennessee.

When Louisiana seceded in 1861, the Bishop offered his services to the Southern Cause. He was appointed major general by his friend and former West Point classmate, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and soon became a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee, one of the three major components of the Confederate Army. (Note: At this time the AOT was referred to as the Army of Mississippi.)

General Polk fought in many battles including Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga and the Atlanta Campaign. He was even involved in the defeat of forces led by Gen. Ulysses Grant at Belmont, Missouri early in the War.

One of the endearing legends of the War involved Gen. Polk at the Battle of Perryville in Kentucky. While observing Major General Ben Cheatham advancing his forces, Gen. Polk overheard Gen. Cheatham encourage his troops with the shout, " Give 'em Hell, boys!". Gen. Polk gave his blessing to Cheatham's exhortation but in a manner befitting a man of the cloth. His shout of encouragement was, " Give it to 'em, boys, give 'em what General Cheatham says".

In October 1862, Leonidas Polk was promoted to lieutenant general. Of the 425 generals of the Confederacy only 17 reached the rank of lieutenant general and only 8 others reached the highest rank of full general. As a lieutenent general he commanded the First Corps of the Army of Tennessee from November 1862 until September 1863.

One of the subplots of the War during this period involved the enmity between Gen. Polk and General Braxton Bragg. Gen. Bragg was a full general and commanded the Army of Tennessee, but Gen. Polk thought him to be incompetent and carried on a year-long campaign to have Bragg removed from command. Bragg, in turn, despised Polk and thought him to be ineffective and incompetent. President Jefferson Davis thought highly of each man and was reluctant to relieve either of his command. This was but one of many feuds involving Confederate generals during the War.

Finally, in December 1863, President Davis transferred Gen. Polk to command of the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana and later the Department of Alabama and East Mississippi. During this time he was unable to stop the advance of Sherman's horde upon Meridian, Mississippi and, consequently, that city was totally destroyed by Union forces in February 1864.

During the Spring of 1864, Polk moved his forces to Georgia to help in the defense of Atlanta against Sherman's advance. On June 14, 1864, Gen. Polk was with a group of Confederate officers (Including Gen. Joe Johnston and Gen. William Hardee) atop Pine Mountain near Marietta when they were spotted by the reprobate Sherman who ordered an artillery attack upon the group. During the shelling a round sliced through Gen. Polk's body and exploded nearby. Gen. Johnston, who had been baptized by Gen. Polk earlier in the War, stood over the torn-apart body of his comrade and cried.

The death of the popular general was mourned throughout the Army of Tennessee. Thomas Connelly, in AUTUMN OF GLORY, wrote: "The army had sufferred a severe loss...The loss was one of morale and experience. Polk was the army's most beloved general, a representative of that intangible identification of the army with Tennessee."

Perhaps the feelings toward Leonidas Polk were best described by Private Sam Watkins in his classic book, COMPANY AYTCH, when he wrote: " My pen and ability is inadequate to the task of doing his memory justice. Every private soldier loved him. Second to Stonewall Jackson, his loss was the greatest the South ever sustained. When I saw him dead, I felt that I had lost a friend whom I had ever loved and respected, and that the South had lost one of her best and greatest Generals."

It was later reported that the Illinois soldier who fired the cannon shot that killed General Polk was so distraught about killing such a fine man that he committed suicide. I feel certain Sherman, by contrast, rejoiced at the death of Leonidas Polk since he despised both Southerners and the clergy.

There is a monument on private property near the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park which marks the spot where General Polk died. It was erected by a private citizen many years after the War ended. He had been a Confederate soldier. Even though the monument is on private property it is still accessible to visitors. He wanted to make sure that people did not forget General Polk.

Gen. Polk's legacy and memory live on still in a rather spectacular way. Fort Polk, the largest United States Military installation in Louisiana and the home of the Joint Readiness Training Center, bears the name of "The Fighting Bishop". How appropriate!

Incidentally, the Polk Corps flag is one of the most beautiful and beloved of Confederate flags. It's appearance is somewhat different than most Confederate flags having a blue background with red bars rather than a red background with blue bars and the bars on the Polk flag are not diagonal (Greek Cross design) but, rather, horizontal and vertical (Christian Cross design) with the bars crossing at the midpoint of the flag. Each flag has thirteen white stars.

In closing I'd like to quote from one of my favorite books, SONS OF THE SOUTH, published in 1961 by that wonderful Southerner, orator and journalist, Clayton Rand. Mr. Rand had this to say about General/Bishop Leonidas Polk:

"With the Holy Bible in one hand and his sword in the
other, he was a good influence on the rank and file
throughout the conflict. While other generals waged
war to preserve the Constitution, the "Fighting Bishop"
was engaged in a holy crusade."

and

"Polk was a product of that peculiar and sometimes
inconsistent aristocracy of the South, which will
probably fight until the end of time for its beliefs. In
the pulpit and on the battlefield, he lived up to the
tradition of a family that offered itself again and again
for the cause of freesom."

And finally, I want to thank all of you who stopped by to chat after the Veterans Day Parade in Crawfordville on November 6. I always appreciate hearing your comments about CONFEDERATE JOURNAL articles and enjoy meeting you. You were all so very kind with your comments and, no, I have no plans to stop writing the articles anytime soon. That is," Lord willin' and the creek don't rise".

DEO VINDICE

Bob Hurst is a Southern Patriot with a special interest in the Confederacy and the antebellum architecture of the Old South. He is Commander of Col. David Lang Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Tallahassee and is 2nd Lieutenent Commander of the Florida Division, SCV. He can be contacted at confederatedad1@yahoo.com or 850-878-7010.

EX-UNION COLONEL WHO WAS PROMINENT ABOLISTIONIST SUPPORTED CONFEDERATE PLAQUES AT HARVARD IN 1904

A Harvard alumnus who served as a Union colonel and had been a leader of the Abolitionist movement in New England predicted in 1904 that the Harvard Confederate dead would receive equal memorial recognition at the University nearly 100 years ago, contemporary sources indicate.

The August, 1904, issue of “The Confederate Veteran”, official magazine of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, reported as follows:

“Harvard May Honor Confederates “(Confederate Veteran, August 1904, page 378)

“A telegram to the New York Tribune from Cambridge, Massachusetts says Col.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his annual Memorial Day address at Harvard, predicted that in time tablets would be placed in Memorial Hall for the fallen Confederate Harvard men beside the tablets bearing the sons of Harvard who fell in the Union ranks. In connection therewith he said, ‘We have ceased calling the war of 1861 the rebellion, and instead speak of it as the Civil War. We have also come to see that the men who fought for the South bled and died for a principle that was as sacred to them as the preservation of the union was to us---the love of their State and the belief in her sovereign rights.’”

Higginson’s espousement of equal recognition for the Harvard Confederate dead is particularly interesting in light of his biography: He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard at the age of sixteen and entered Harvard Divinity School, but withdrew to devote full time to abolitionist activities. He was one of the “Secret Six” who helped raise money for John Brown’s raid. He served as Colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first authorized Union regiment to be comprised of ex-slaves. Yet, eighty-four years before Harvard professor emeritus Mason Hammond suggested a Confederate memorial at Harvard, Higginson remarked on the validity of Harvard Confederates’ service and urged the memorializing of those who had died wearing gray.

The “Confederate Veteran” passage relating Higginson’s remarks was submitted by SLRC Board Member Bernhard Thuersam.

Harvard Memorial Committee Chairman Visits SLRC, discusses strategy

Patrick B. O’Neal, Chairman of the SLRC’s Harvard Confederate Memorial Initiative Committee, recently spent two days at the SLRC offices exploring ways and means of bringing pressure to bear on the Harvard administration to erect an on-campus memorial to its 71 alumni who died fighting for the Confederacy.

Committee membership is still being extended, and consists of both Harvard alumni (such as O”Neal himself, who is a Harvard Law graduate) and “laymen.” The overall strategy is to work through selected Harvard alumni chapters and on a one-to-one basis with key Harvard personnel to reintroduce the Confederate memorial idea, which was originally floated at Harvard in the 1980’s but was subsequently shelved following vehement protests from minority student associations and some faculty and administrators, including the then president of the University.

The SLRC designed a HCMI lapel pin and blazer badge for use in its grassroots campaign, and has been offering them as bonus premiums to new or existing SLRC members who contribute at the level of $75 or more. At present, the SLRC still has about 100 of these beautiful enamel pins and embroidered blazer patches on hand before having to reorder, and is making them available on a first-come, first-served basis to both new and existing members. For a look at the HCMI logo, as well as an SLRC membership application form, please visit the SLRC website, www.slrc-csa.org.

School forces outside workman to remove CBF From truck?

SLRC investigates reports

ASHEVILLE, NC – The SLRC is investigating reports from several sources that a member of a Tennessee-based roofing crew doing work at Asheville High School was made to remove a decorative Confederate battle flag license plate from his personal vehicle.

According to eyewitness reports, the foreman of the work crew from Eskola Roofing Company of Morristown, TN, was approached by an unidentified member of the Asheville High School maintenance department, given a screwdriver and told the crew foreman to have the driver of the vehicle with the Confederate tag remove the tag or shut the entire job down.

However, in an e-mail to Southern Heritage 411 President H. K. Edgerton, Asheville City Schools Superintendent Allen Johnson denied that such an ultimatum was issued. Instead, Johnson said, the Asheville High employee told the Eskola foreman he “had a concern about possible vandalism to the van [which displayed the Battle Flag]” Johnson quoted the foreman as saying “I gave direction to the driver of the van to remove the tag with his own tools. At no time did [the Asheville High staffer] tell me to remove the tag or shut the job down.”

“While Board policies and contract requirements do set out acceptable behavior of outside contractors when they are on school property, the display of a Confederate flag vanity license plate is nowhere addressed or regulated,” Johnson admitted.

SLRC HELPS STUDENT ATTAIN 'BLOODLESS' HERITAGE VICTORY AT NC SCHOOL

GASTON COUNTY, NC - Thanks to information and advice from the Southern Legal Resource Center, a Gaston County student will once again be able to wear Confederate-themed clothing to class without fear of "disciplinary" action.

Travis Lewis, 17, a student at Hunter Huss High School in Gaston County, received an apology from the local Superintendent of Schools and was assured that he could resume wearing his Dixie Outfitters Confederate-themed t-shirts to class. The Superintendent's actions reversed those of the high school principal, who on Oct. 5 had told Travis the Dixie Outfitters shirt he was wearing was "inappropriate" and that he would have to change or cover it up. When Travis and another student demurred, reports say, Gaston County police officers and other school administrators converged on the students, who then complied.

Travis' father, Scott Lewis, said his son had been wearing the shirts for three years with no complaint or disruption. According to Lewis Sr., the principal told him a Mexican flag shirt, for instance, would have been appropriate to wear but that Confederate symbols had caused tension within the past few years.

At this point, the Lewises sought direction from the SLRC. Chief Trial Counsel Kirk Lyons advised them that theoretically the school could ban Confederate shirts if there were clear and present danger of "substantial and material disruption"; but otherwise to do so was an abridgement of the student's First Amendment rights. Lyons cited two landmark cases, Tinker Vs. Des Moines and Frederick v. Morse as precedents. Armed with this information, the Lewises went back to the school board. The school system's attorney said he had no knowledge of any specific ban on Confederate symbols. Subsequently the Superintendent issued his apology, told Travis he was free to wear his shirts and, according to Mr. Lewis, "promised to make sure [the principal] better understands the policy and the law.”

"This is a good example of how these types of situations can be defused with just proper and open communication," Lyons said. "It's also an example of the many such incidents the SLRC is able to help resolve without taking anybody to court."