NORTH CAROLINA: JROTC Cadet Wore Confederate Uniform to Armed Services Night
A student in Erwin High School‘s JROTC program wore a Confederate uniform during a football game ceremony on Oct. 7, bringing up issues the school has dealt with in years past.
The uniform — a standard set of Confederate grays — made an appearance on Armed Services Night during a football game.
Buncombe County Schools’ current dress code policy bars Confederate symbols.
“The event was during the Erwin Football game last Friday (Oct. 7),” schools spokesperson Stacia Harris wrote in an email to the Citizen Times. “It was Armed Services night which is an annual tradition that involves all of the JROTC Cadets. The costumes for the color guard were chosen to represent different military eras. The costumes range in the level of detail and historical authenticity.”
“The school board is not involved; however, the central office and school administrators have looked into the situation and, moving forward, will better train our staff to screen for appropriateness as related to historical period piece costumes,” Harris wrote.
Previously:Students can wear Confederate symbol to school. Some Buncombe students want that to stop
BCS:Buncombe Sheriff: Man brought concealed gun to youth football event at Reynolds High
From 1861 to 1865, the seceded Confederate States of America fought to preserve slavery in the South. Three days before the Civil War ended, there was the Battle of Asheville — a five-hour standoff at the city’s northern outskirts. Asheville had once aspired to be the “capital of the Confederacy,” with its recruitment camps, rifle factory and geographic centrality, historian John Inscoe has written.
Confederate symbols have long been utilized in white supremacist movements, seeing a resurgence during the Civil Rights Movement. And in 2015, after Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners, journalists and law enforcement soon dug up his online manifesto that showed him waving the Stars and Bars, reigniting the longtime conversation about racism and Confederate symbols.
In 2019, students at Erwin High protested for the school to no longer allow Confederate symbols on campus. Students counterprotesting showed up in their Confederate threads. Clothes can be disallowed if “deemed by school officials to be reasonably likely to create a substantial and material disruption to the educational process or to the operation of the school, including but not limited to items that are reasonably expected to intimidate other students on the basis of race (for example the Confederate flag, swastika, and Ku Klux Klan or KKK or affirmations of white supremacy), gender, gender identification, sexual orientation, creed, national origin, religious affiliation or physical, emotional or intellectual abilities or characteristics,” the policy reads.
–citizen-times.com
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