Civil War Day sparks mom’s ire
‘You are my slave’: classmate tells black child
KENNESAW, GA. — A new battle line has formed in the national debate over Civil War flags and symbols — this time at a Georgia school not far from where Confederate soldiers fired their cannons at Union troops more than a century ago.
The school last month invited fifthgraders to dress up as characters from the Civil War. A white student, dressed as a plantation owner, said to a 10-year-old black classmate, “You are my slave,” said the black child’s parent, Corrie Davis.
“What I want them to understand is the pain it caused my son,” Davis said of her child, who did not dress up that day. “This is bringing them back to a time when people were murdered, when people died, when people owned people.”
Davis recorded an emotional video in which she explains how she was affected by what happened to her son. It has attracted about 70,000 views on Facebook. The distraught mother said she met with school officials, but was dismayed when they refused to promise that they would never conduct a class in that way again. The issue could come to a head in a couple of weeks, when Davis plans to bring it up at a regularly scheduled school board meeting.
“No student was required to dress in period attire and any student that did so was not instructed, nor required, to dress in any specific attire,” school system spokesperson John Stafford said in a brief statement. Cobb County school officials haven’t said whether the annual Civil War Day will continue next year at Big Shanty Intermediate School.
However, the note sent home to parents before the event said “it creates a more realistic simulation when dressing in Civil War clothing.”
Its suggestions included overalls — which Davis believes could have been meant to represent the clothing worn by slaves — and dark pants and white buttondown shirts. White button-down shirts have become synonymous with demonstrators protesting the removal of Confederate statues in recent months. They were worn, for example, by some of the white nationalists who staged a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August.
Davis said she doesn’t object to learning about the Civil War. “I’m simply saying the way in which you are going about teaching this standard is offensive,” she said.
Davis said she won’t back down in her effort to stop the dress-up aspect of the school’s Civil War Day. She said she doesn’t want other students going through what her son did.
“What they can do is say, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore,’” Davis said. “It is mind-boggling to me that no one will say that.”