Latta, S.C. – A 15-year-old girl led a small protest march Monday over her high school’s ban on Confederate flag clothing, which she is challenging in court.
Candice Hardwick walked with about a dozen people, some wearing Confederate T-shirts, a few blocks to Latta High School. Hardwick wore a Confederate belt buckle and button and had the Confederate flag on her cellphone cover. She removed those items before entering the school, where she is a sophomore.
Hardwick says she wants to wear the emblem to pay tribute to ancestors who fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. She said she has been forced to change clothes or turn her shirt inside out, and has been suspended twice and threatened with being kicked off the track team.
Among those marching with her was a black man, H.K. Edgerton, past chairman of the Southern Legal Resource Center’s advisory board, which has sued on her behalf. A former local NAACP leader in North Carolina, Edgerton is known for dressing up in Confederate gear to emphasize what he describes as the role blacks played in supporting the South in the Civil War.
