American Notes

The Civil War ended 126 years ago, but the Stars and Bars can still stir racial tension in the old Confederacy. Three years ago, 14 black state legislators in Alabama were arrested for attempting to remove the Confederate flag, symbol of a slaveholders' rebellion, at the state capitol. In 1983 black students at the University of Mississippi succeeded in forcing the school to abandon the flag as its emblem.

This month a handful of white students at the James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., which in 1970 banned use of the flag in official activities, began demanding the right to wear it on their clothes. What started as a violation of the school's code of conduct soon developed into a full-scale freedom of speech demonstration, with 80 students and parents parading the rebel banner on Duncan's East Main Street. Said 10th-grader Jamie Dill: "My daddy gave me this ((flag)). I believe in what it stands for." By the time the flap subsided last week, about 100 students had been suspended.