African American leaders to meet with Montgomery County Mayor, Redevelopment Plan Review Committee Members
August 31, 2008
Clarksville Online
- A group of concerned leaders from the African American community in Clarksville will meet with Montgomery County Mayor Carolyn Bowers and County Commissioners on September 3 at the Old Courthouse Building, 1 Millennium Plaza (2nd & Commerce), in downtown Clarksville, at 4:00 p.m. Commissioners Mark Banasiak, Ron Sokol and Martha Brockman, the ad hoc subcommittee members reviewing the controversial Clarksville Center Redevelopment and Urban Renewal Plan, will participate in the meeting.
Judges support Tenn. school’s Confederate flag ban
August 20, 2008
ROSE FRENCH (AP)
- A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday in favor of a Tennessee school system that banned the Confederate battle flag because of concerns the symbol could inflame racial tensions at a high school.
Students Derek Barr, Chris White, Roger Craig White and their parents said in a lawsuit their free speech rights were violated by the 2005 flag ban at William Blount High School in Maryville, about 15 miles south of Knoxville.
School officials said the ban came after previous race-related incidents that included a racial slur, a fight, a civil rights complaint, a lockdown and graffiti depicting a Confederate flag and a noose.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pointed to those incidents in ruling that school officials had a right to ban the flag because they could “reasonably forecast” that it would cause disruption.
“The school did not merely find the Confederate flag offensive to some students but rather found that in a context of high racial tensions, race-related altercations, and threats of violence, the flag would disrupt the school’s educational process,” said the opinion that was filed in Cincinnati.
It cited previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings that allow schools to limit student speech in order to prevent disruptions to education and upheld a lower federal court’s dismissal of the lawsuit in 2007.
The Confederate flag is considered a symbol of racism and intolerance by some, while others consider it an emblem of their Southern heritage.
The students argued that there was no evidence the flag caused any disruption. The school is mostly white but about 3 percent of its 1,800 students are black, said Principal Steve Lafon.
“We have all along felt it was in the best interest of our school environment to not allow any symbols … that might be racially divisive in any way,” said Lafon, who was a defendant in the lawsuit with the director of schools and the school board.
Van Irion, a Knoxville attorney who represented the students, called the ruling “appalling” and said he planned to appeal it to the Supreme Court.
“It’s very clear this panel doesn’t like the Confederate flag,” Irion said. “That was their starting point in coming to the decision they did. The subject matter of the ban is not supposed to be relevant at all in a First Amendment analysis.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a string of similar free-speech claims from Texas to South Carolina since the 1990s.
Last week, an East Tennessee teenager’s free-speech lawsuit against a school dress code that banned Confederate flag clothing ended in a mistrial when a federal jury failed to reach a verdict. That lawsuit also centers on whether schools can ban the flag if it causes no substantial disruption.
In the case brought by Tommy DeFoe, 18, school officials in Clinton, Tenn. said they worried that displaying the flag would lead to racial tensions and violence at Anderson County High, which has had problems before, and at nearby Clinton High School.
Former NAACP leader supports Confederate flag
August 12, 2008
WVLT - Knoxville
- A student fighting for the right to wear the confederate flag in school is getting some unlikely support.
Confederate flag supporter H.K. Edgerton says, “We are Southern, too, but don’t come taking away our place of honor and dignity which is what these folks have done.”
Edgerton is a former NAACP leader and is now a confederate heritage supporter joining the plaintiffs in support of the Confederate flag in Anderson County.
Plaintiff s continued with their testimony in Federal Court Tuesday.
School officials testified that there had been several occurrences of racially motivated incidents, but also said symbols of the flag were not present except for one time when two black students came to Anderson County High School following hurricane Katrina to find a Confederate flag in the school.
Tenn. Defies Cliches on Race and Politics
August 10, 2008
Darryl Fears, Washington Post
- For Nikki Tinker, Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District hung as sweetly as a plum in the state’s Democratic primary. It has a black majority, is full of churchgoing African American women like herself, and includes the hallowed ground where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white man.
But in an election season in which racial appeals may be losing their power, Tinker discovered that looks can be deceiving. On Election Day, she was crushed by her white opponent, Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, whom Tinker labeled as anti-prayer in one campaign ad and tried to link to the Ku Klux Klan in another.
“It was the first time in a state election where race could have been a factor and wasn’t,” said Larry Moore, an associate professor at the University of Memphis. “She fit the demographic perfectly. She was active in the churches. The majority of voters are female. And she got blown out.”
Cohen Wins Racially Charged Dem. Vote
August 7, 2008
Woody Baird, (AP)
- Freshman congressman Steve Cohen has won the Democratic primary for Congress by defeating an opponent who tried to focus the campaign on race.
Cohen, the first white congressman for the mostly black Memphis district, beat challenger Nikki Tinker in voting Thursday. In the heavily Democratic District, the winner of the democratic primary is almost assured of victory in the general elections.
The Memphis district, which is 60 percent black, sent Cohen to Congress in 2006. He is the first white congressman for the district in more than three decades.
Race was a big part of the campaign from the beginning but TV ads by Tinker focused that attention even more sharply in the closing days.
One sought to link Cohen to the Ku Klux Klan.
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