Colorado Controversy Raises Questions Over the Meaning of the Gadsden Flag [Updated] JONATHAN TURLEY
The historic Gadsden flag is at the heart of a controversy involving a twelve-year-old boy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The child was removed from the school due to a patch on his backpack featuring the flag. The school district defended the action and claimed that, despite its historical symbolism, it is now considered racist and connected to slavery. Not only is the flag a historical image originally unconnected to slavery, but the action (in my view) contravenes core free speech protections.
The flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina in 1775 as a symbol of the defiance of colonists to British rule. (Some trace the origins of the flag earlier to a design by Benjamin Franklin). Featuring a timber snake, it affirmed the view of the colonists that they would not be stepped on by overbearing British officials and troops.
While Gadsden would become a brigadier general in the Continental Army, he gave the flag to Commodore Esek Hopkins who later adopted it as his flag as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Navy. For the revolutionaries, it embodied the essence of the war: they were the victims of the British overstepping their authority and treading upon the rights of the colonies.
The historic image is still cherished by many, including those who see it as a symbol of defiance of individual citizens to overreaching government action.
That was the view at The Vanguard School in Colorado Springs. A video on the social media platform X, shows the 12-year-old elementary school student being removed from class.
A staff member explained that the image is now deemed disruptive to the classroom environment and that it has origins with slavery. The boy s parent is told that the child must remove the patch before he can return to school.
The staffer tells the parent to speak with Jeff Yocum, the director of operations at the school.
Yocum reportedly cited research by a graphic design professor at Iowa State University Paul Bruski, who declared the flag as now a symbol of hate: Because of its creator s history and because it is commonly flown alongside Trump 2020 flags, the Confederate battle flag and other white-supremacist flags, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate or even racism.
Yocum also reportedly cited a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling involving a Postal worker, which found that while the flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context, despite its historic origins and meaning of the symbol, it also has since been sometimes interpreted to convey racially-tinged messages.
We previously discussed how the EEOC reinstated a case in 2016 of an employee objecting to another employee wearing a cap with the symbol.
Jonathan Turley.
I rather like the Gadsden Flag. I like it even more than I like the various Rainbow flags so popular now. I don’t think that makes me a racist. But better I think is the Navy version of “Dont Tread On Me” flag, where the snake is stretched out against a background of red and white stripes. The US Navy adopted that as an anti-terrorist flag, back in the day. I wonder what will become of it.