Heritage, not hate

BEAUFORT, South Carolina (AP) -- The suspensions of 35 high school
students in this quaint coastal town have made it the new focus of an
old issue: the potentially offensive fashion statement made by donning
the Confederate flag.

Outrage over the suspensions last month of students who wore shirts with
the flag sparked a protest march to a school district office and a
roadside protest where students waved the flag and held signs
proclaiming "Heritage, not hate."

"I had no idea in the world anyone would be offended by this," says
Brook Armstrong, a 17-year-old Beaufort High student sitting in her
family's home overlooking the marsh and a dock where a Confederate flag
snaps in the breeze.

She wears the white T-shirt that got her suspended. On the back, it
shows chickens hatching from eggs decorated with the Confederate flag.
"Southern chicks, better than the rest," reads the shirt.

To Armstrong, the shirt is part of being a Southern girl.

"If anyone asks 'Do you know Brook Armstrong?' everyone says the real
Southern girl with the country accent," she says. "That's my personality
and how everybody knows me."


Aryan Nation recruiter


But such T-shirts were banned at Beaufort High after a student, who has
since left school, wore a flag shirt and handed out literature with
Confederate emblems to recruit members for the Aryan Nation, a white
supremacist group.

A few days later, school hall monitors headed off a confrontation
between the student and two others. The monitors reported more students
also seemed to be wearing the flag shirts, said Principal Bill Evans.

Under the county school dress code, administrators may prohibit the
wearing of clothing "which may foreseeably disrupt or interfere with the
school environment."

About 35 students at Beaufort and nearby Battery Creek High were
suspended -- some more than once because they returned to school wearing
such shirts, said John Williams, a spokesman for the Beaufort County
School District.

One day about 60 students turned out for a dawn roadside demonstration
near the entrance to Beaufort High. A few days later a group of students
and parents marched in protest trough downtown to the school district
offices.

All the suspensions have since run their course, says Evans who notes
students in the past wore Confederate symbols without incident but when
it became an issue, steps were taken to prohibit them.


Vow to home school


"We clearly had a disruptive activity taking place," he says. "It's my
major responsibility to provide a healthy and safe atmosphere for
students at the school. That's my first priority."

Brook will not be returning to Beaufort High, says her mother, Renee
Armstrong.

"My stand is going to be that I'm going to home school my kids," she
says. "I'm not going to teach my children that they should be ashamed of
the South."

What has happened in Beaufort is not unique. But some here say the
tension over the issue has escalated since the controversy three years
ago about lowering the Confederate flag from the South Carolina
Statehouse.

"The issue of the flag has been out there for many years, but as a minor
issue. In many cases it really began to take off with the flag
controversy in South Carolina," says Mark Potok, a spokesman for the
Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

"When the flag came off the Statehouse dome, flag cases increased
dramatically," said Kirk Lyons, an attorney and director of the Southern
Legal Resource Center, which takes on Southern heritage cases.

Lyons says his group has received 300 requests for assistance from
people who feel they have been discriminated against for flag issues
since August 2000.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that students' free speech rights don't
end at the schoolhouse door. But other courts have ruled that
administrators are responsible for school safety.

The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled last month that a school
could prohibit students from displaying the Confederate flag on school
grounds.


'Strong feelings are involved'


It noted that words like "symbol," "heritage," "racism," and "slavery,"
are highly charged and often associated with discussions of the flag.

"Real feelings -- strong feelings -- are involved," the court wrote. "It
is not only constitutionally allowable for school officials to closely
contour the range of expression children are permitted regarding such
volatile issues, it is their duty to do so."

But Lyons, who says he will consult with the Armstrongs about possible
legal action in Beaufort, calls it "an uninformed and dishonest
opinion."

He says students have a right to display Confederate symbols.

"This is not something that is a fad. These kids know it is part of
their family," he said. "They may not know who their Confederate
ancestors were, but they know they have them. The school does not have
the right to take that away from them."