Letter -Chris Boyd

My name is Chris Byrd and I attend Camden Middle School. I am writing you this letter because I want to be able to wear my heritage, the Confederate Flag to school. I am not racist in the least, but I do wear the Confederate Flag.
      The First Amendment states that, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. I believe that under the First Amendment of the Constitution I have the right to freedom of speech
      I do not see why black people can wear FUBU which means For Us By Us meaning for blacks by blacks. They can also wear Malcolm X which offends me but they can still wear , but white people can’t wear something that they believe in. I would be perfectly fine if you would let them wear their X and I will wear my X.
     The NAACP brought the flag off the state house. Now they are at all the rest areas in South Carolina, because they want the flag off of State House grounds. If they can do that I don’t see why people can’t wear it to school. What do we have to do to get it in schools go to every school and say don’t go to school until the Confederate Flag is in schools?
      I just learned that not only did white people have slaves, black people had black slaves, but those people are not being prosecuted just for the simple fact that they are black. Do you see people of other cultures boycotting about states flying the American flag on their state houses.
      "Heritage, not hate," as they say. White South Carolinians don’t fly their Confederate flags because they hate black people. We fly our flags because of Yankees and the protective tariff that protected them. Southerners want their children, and their children’s children, to gaze upwards at the red, white, and blue X and be proud to have grown up in a region that has been hit and hit by groups of people trying to destroy their heritage. If the Confederate flag has so much hatred of black people then why do some black people wear it and say that the Confederate flag is their heritage also. I have many friends that are black and they know that I support the Confederate Flag, they don’t care because they know that I am not racist.
      Thousands of men and children died for this flag, some of which were my age. 13 and 14 year old boys died for this flag, what they believed in. If the war was going on today I would be on the front line, not because I hate black people, which I don’t, but for what I and thousands of other men believe.11 states South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. Men and children died from each one these states.
      These are quotes from General Robert E. Lee and from the Sons of the Confederate Veterans.

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today …. The reputation of an individual is of minor importance to the opinion posterity may form of the motives which governed the South in their late struggle for the maintenance of the principles of the Constitution. I hope therefore, a true history will be written, and justice will be done them." — Gen. Robert E. Lee

"I was a soldier in Virginia in the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, and I declare I never met a Southern soldier who had drawn his sword to perpetuate slavery…. What he had chiefly at heart was the preservation of the supreme and sacred right of self- government…. It was a very small minority of the men who fought in the Southern armies who were financially interested in the institution of slavery."