KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) – 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 a mountaintop where Confederate soldiers fired their cannons at Union troops more than a century ago.
The school near Kennesaw Mountain last month invited fifth-graders 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,” she said.
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.