Some North Carolina public schools ban Confederate flag clothing

A public school board in Durham County, N.C., voted Thursday to ban the Confederate flag and other hate symbols from its dress code.

The unanimous vote to revise the dress code also included bans on Ku Klux Klan symbols and swastikas and any symbol “reasonably expected to intimidate other students on the basis of race” or “any other classification that is protected by law, regulation or Board policy,” according to Durham’s Herald-Sun. 

In another unanimous vote, the board decided to remove Confederate Civil War veteran and philanthropist Julian Shakespeare Carr’s name from the Durham School of the Arts middle school building due to Carr’s racist statements. The building previously housed an all-white high school. 

{mosads}The move comes amid public backlash to the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., which protested the tearing down of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. A number of cities and institutions have responded by removing down Confederate statues, including another monument to Lee at Duke University, also located in Durham County. 

“I felt it was really important for us to get specific, called-out examples of the kinds of things that are bubbling up now,” Durham school board chairman Mike Lee told the Herald-Sun. 

In addition to the removal of Carr’s name, the Durham Schools Superintendent Bert L’Homme said the administration began a review of the names of all of its schools and their building names. 

The nearby Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems have also instituted similar revisions to their dress codes, with all three systems citing the deadly violence in Charlottesville as motivation for their actions, according to the report.