Seamstress sues over confederate style

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/1204/23promdress.html


Teen sues over Confederate flag prom dress

Associated Press
Published on: 12/23/04

LEXINGTON, Ky. — A teenager is suing her eastern Kentucky school district for barring her from the prom for wearing a red dress styled as a large Confederate flag.

School officials called Jacqueline Duty's homemade dress too controversial and kept her out of Russell High School's May 1 prom.
Lexington Herald-Leader
Jacqueline Duty models the Confederate dress she designed for her high school prom.


Duty's federal lawsuit claims the Russell Independent Board of Education violated her First Amendment right to free speech and her right to celebrate her heritage. She also is suing for defamation, false imprisonment and assault.

"Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio," said her lawyer, Earl-Ray Neal.

At a news conference in front of the federal courthouse in Lexington on Monday, Duty acknowledged that some might find the Confederate flag offensive.

"Everyone has their own opinion. But that's not mine. I'm proud of where I came from and my background," said the 19-year-old who is now attending Shawnee State University in Ohio.

She also showed the dress.

"I wanted to show part of my Southern heritage," she said, adding that she had worked on the dress' design for four years.

Kirk Lyons, one of her lawyers, said Duty waited several months to file the lawsuit because much of the legal work is being done for free. The Sons of Confederate Veterans also promised to help pay for some of the legal expenses.

Duty says she was told not to wear the dress by school officials shortly before the prom, and was turned away outside the prom when she asked administrators if they would change their minds.

The lawsuit says that after the prom, school officials made students wearing Confederate symbols change or remove the items even though the symbols were not creating any disruption in the predominantly white high school.

Officials from the Russell Independent Board of Education and Superintendent Ronnie Back did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Federal court opinions on the display of the Confederate flag on clothing at public schools have been mixed.

In 2002, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a case involving another Kentucky student.

In 1997, Timothy Castorina was suspended for wearing a T-shirt with a Confederate flag on it to Madison Central High School. He sued, but a federal judge ruled that T-shirts were not a form of free speech, and tossed out the case. However, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision and ordered a new trial.

The case was settled before the second trial began. As part of the settlement, Madison County revamped its dress code policy.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not heard a case over whether a student can wear Confederate symbols to school.



Forget the dress...the makeup was cause for expulsion...

I had no idea Crayola made cosmetics.

This is what you get when siblings breed.

No, this is what happens when hillbillies go to high school proms.

Here we go again.

America is a silly place sometimes.

*sigh*

It's not America...it's the people in it.

I was thinking more that the schools were being silly in this case

Dont forget that bigotry includes discriminating against people like this girl

Dont be a bigot

-AP

She should be able to wear it. If you don't allow it, where do you start to draw the line?

She'll look like a redneck, but who cares?

You know, the interestingly, most times I've heard about 'southern pride' it is never elaborated on. I'm very curious to know exactly what they are taking pride in.

Prolly the fact that they previously owned people.

LOL now that's a bigoted comment.

There was a saying I read somewhere ... someone's sig I think. Something about a bigot being looser or something. Looser than what I cant remember. Oh well, its prolly not important.

-AP

It's a shame schools can't expel students for bad taste.

The dress, the hair, the makeup. All bad.

I mean honestly, if I had those hips, the last thing I would do is highlight them with huge confederate stripes.

They shoulda let her wear it. She would have learned her lesson after scores of people pointed and laughed. In the 21st Century, bad taste always trumps political statements. How can you possibly be offended while you're rolling around on the floor laughing?

At least all the shiny sequines draw the eye away from the dire need for a root job...that aside this version of the confederate flag has been repurposed by some white supremacy groups but was only one of many flags used by the regiments of the southern states army

The true confederate flag is a stars and bars type flag with two red bars, one white bar and the 11 stars on a blue background much like the American Flag we know today. The "southern cross" was designed by scottsman in Virginia to depict the martyred saint Andrew who was crucified on an x shaped cross. Greater use of this design spawned from necessity. The stars and bars on the battlefield caused confusion as they looked so similar to the union flag.

From what I can tell, the pride seems to be rooted in years of struggle, famine, oppression by northern owned textile companies and a general angst towards the wealth concentrated in the northern states. Not to mention a hatred of big government imposing heavy protective tariffs. It has precious little to do with bigotry, although the bigots are the loudest and tend to draw attention away from the true plight of the southerners during before and after the civil war. This was not a war to end slavery, though the means would have justified that end. Even Lincoln was cited in a letter to Horace Greeley saying: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." The war of the states was fought over tarriffs not over slave ownership. Luckily something good came out of it in the end though.

Uhm, you from the south by chance?

I am

I gave her a makeover. That hair and makeup needed some serious work.

I think you will all agree it is a vast improvement while still keeping with the theme of her heritage.

I don't know Kentucky law on student rights but Tinker v. Des Moines School District in the late 1960's is highly applicable to this situation (students wore black arm bands to school to protest the Vietnam War). The reason a student can't be expel for bad taste in clothing is that all students have an equal right to education; expelling a student for their clothing could be considered discrimination.

Sadly, the ownership of slaves tended to be the realm of a very small minority of Southerners, even at it's height. (Much like the 90% of wealth today being held by 10% of the populace) Even more importantly, though, is the fact that no person now in the south (as well as their parents, grands, and even great grands) have ever owned slaves...yet still get to catch shit from people who descended from supposedly more "morally centered" people who abolished slavery more to break the back of the Confederacy than for any grand notion of black people's freedom...Remember, until the south's economy started to threaten the north's, there was NO problem from any American in using the textiles and foodstuffs being produced by slaves.
If I'm wrong about this then why couldn't a black man use a white northerner's toilet until the 1950's?

So, let the fat hick chick wear her stars and bars. She looks like a train wreck. I don't really see this as any more or less offensive than two guys wanting to be prom dates or some guy showing up in a t-shirt and shorts so he can look "controversial" at the prom.

LOL too funny



Good point. Some peabrain in a pointy hood makes a more exciting talk show guest than some historian with dry facts*. Not that the old south (or, more specifically, segments of it) is innocent of wrong doing, of course.


I suppose "Fighting the battle cry of Freedom" sounded more inspiring than "Fighting the battlecry of Ecconomics".

I don't even know if I'm that much better- although the individuals who sewed my clothes or harvested my fruit/veggies/coffee/tea aren't enslaved, I'm guessing they're hardworking, underpaid, in crappy working conditions, with little opportunities to get ahead. A 21st century historian may well condemn people like me as well.


*although it does seem ironic that a group of people who owned another group of people considered themselves the oppressed ones. (To be fair, I'm overgeneralizing since many didn't own slaves. But was this because they were morally opposed to slavery? Or because they couldn't afford to buy someone?)

I might be a Slave

Some would argue that the "indentured servitude" of the hispanics in the fruit industry today would qualify as loose form of slavery. But we all love that buy one get one free Tropicana at the local pig-in-poke mart. So they work, often for nothing as by the end of the season they owe the company store more for room and board than their wages can cover.

Both the north and the south were guilty of the ravages of slavery. What commodity do you think was first traded on WallStreet? I can tell you it wasn't Eastman Kodak...the blue chip of the time was the slave market. Slaves were sent to the southern states to work because they were able to withstand the heat and the arduose labor in the indigo fields, cotton fields and sugar camps. The impoverished whites of the south far outnumbered the slave holders and were treated little better than slaves. It was lack of education and misguided anger that lead them into the war of the states not the slave ownership of the morally defunct.

Yes, if that matters

Bigotry is bigotry regardless though ...

unless exceptions should be made for certain forms of bigotry. What do you think?

-AP

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