John Whitehead's Commentary
The Right to Display the Confederate Flag: Students Do Not Shed Their First Amendment Rights at the Schoolhouse Gate
Although Governor James S. Gilmore had declared April 2000 as "Confederate History Month" in Virginia, Varina High School decided to enforce its ban on the display of Confederate symbols on school grounds. To join the state's commemoration and to protest their school's ban, the two students wore T-shirts bearing the Confederate flag to school. School officials ordered them to turn their shirts inside out during school hours and forbade them to display the Confederate flag on school property during the school day.
After collecting 132 signatures from their schoolmates petitioning to lift the school's ban, the students notified the local TV news station there would be a peaceful student demonstration off-campus prior to the start of the school day.
Some 45 minutes before school started, student demonstrators met in the school parking lot wearing Confederate T-shirts and drove to the public library for their demonstration and to meet with television reporters. Before returning to school, some of the students changed their shirts, and others simply turned them inside out.
Upon their return, school officials suspended the two students, along with two other demonstrators, for five days because they had displayed the Confederate flags in the school parking lot as they gathered to go to the public library for the demonstration.
This is a case of individual expression. It has nothing to do with state flags or Confederate flags flying in public places in South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia or elsewhere. These cases raise questions of state-sponsored speech, and in such cases, evolving cultural and racial sensitivities may rightfully be considered.
The case involving the Virginia high schoolers is only about First Amendment free speech rights. Plain and simple. And the students in Virginia are not alone. From Kansas to North Carolina, students are being suspended or disciplined for their otherwise peaceful expressions of what they see as their Confederate heritage.
More than 30 years ago, a few high school students faced similar restrictions as they attempted to protest the Vietnam War. At that time, the Supreme Court upheld the students' rights to express their opinions, saying, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
The problem is how to address the real purpose of the school's restrictions and disciplinary action. If the school's goal is to improve race relations and to eliminate bigotry, fear and discrimination, then the First Amendment's goal of fostering open debate on important issues is the best medicine.
As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which society's wishes can safely be carried out."
History has shown that ideas do not die when they are suppressed. Instead, they often fester underground until they explode. The genius of the American Constitution is that it promotes truth through the full and free discussion of ideas.
Good ideas flourish with unfettered free expression. And as the nation learned with the Supreme Court's 1978 decision upholding the right of the Nazis to march through the heavily Jewish section of Skokie, Illinois, bad ideas eventually wither in the glare of public scrutiny. This is no less true in the hallways or driveways of America's schools.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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