Loudoun County High School: Flag Controversy

Lord Loudoun 1978

   Probably the most talked about and heated controversy at Loudoun County High School was the 1970's Flag Controversy. But, to get there, first we have to set the stage:

   In 1954, out of a choice of 4 mascots, The Raider was chosen as County's mascot. To be more specific, the historic Mosby's Raiders, a famous Confederate Civil War battalion that traveled throughout the area. They were known for their lightning strike attacks against Union soldiers, then eluding capture. They never surrendered, and only disbanded when the Civil War ended. To locals, they were known as heroes.

   In 1960, the school had a contest to draw the school emblem. Bernie Abbott drew the winning image and "won praise from the faculty, as well as from students, for her impressive drawing of a 'Loudoun Raider'." Her image accurately depicted the Raider carrying a Confederate flag.

Lord Loudoun 1964, with the Raider emblem on the cover

   Virginia was considered to be part of the South. With the influx of newcomers to the area, Northern Virginia and Loudoun's population demographics have changed quite a lot since then, but back in the 60's, Loudoun was still firmly in the South. Many people of Loudoun saw the Confederate flag as part of their southern heritage. No one paid the emblem any mind. The school had been segregated when the emblem was chosen, but no issue was raised when the school became integrated. It would be another decade before anyone would.

   Wednesday, January 4, 1978, a young Becky Hough Ott was sitting in her algebra class when she saw a man out the window on the front lawn. "[He] showed up one afternoon... and he started chopping at the school sign with an axe!!"

Loudoun Times-Mirror 1/12/1978 (Gene Ashton with the ax he used to
chop Confederate flags from the sign at Loudoun County High School)

   That man was Gene Ashton. His foster son, Blue Oliver, was the star center of County's basketball team. Blue had recently been dismissed from the team, due to a rule that if you had two unexcused absences from practice, you were cut from the team. Blue missed three practices for a three day detention he got for a fight, and so his Coach followed the rules and cut him from the team.

   Mr. Ashton thought this was an unfair rule and called this "Double jeopardy," also claiming there was black discrimination.  Three members of the team, two of them black, including Blue, had been dismissed from the team by the same rule. Blue was a senior and was missing out on his chance to get scouted by colleges. Mr. Ashton met with Principal Edgar B. Hatrick (and later Loudoun County's School Superintendent 1991-2014), and contacted the current Superintendent, Robert E. Butt, regarding the policy. 

   Chopping off the flags on the sign was a "symbolic protest against what he called the 'insensitivity' of school administrators toward black students." Mr. Ashton said his actions were not done out of frustration or anger, but a conscious protest. Mr. Ashton was described as mild-mannered man. A friend described him as "a voice of reason and reconciliation among voices that were often crazy with the fire of hate and blind with radical militancy," who was "acting in his own personal way." Ashton was later arrested by police and charged with destroying property.

   Letter to the Editors to the Loudoun Times-Mirror by county citizens agreed that the two-day rule was a little harsh, but no one in the paper agreed that chopping the sign was a suitable offense. Instead, Mr. Ashton's actions were labeled as "racist" for chopping the sign. 

   "The fact remains that the punishment imposed on Mr. Ashton's foster son, Blue Oliver, is the same for the black athlete as it is for the white athlete, so I don't see this as a symbolic protest against insensitivity of school administrators toward black students," Thomas J. Davis wrote. Jim Birchfield, an opinion columnist for the Times Mirror, said "The rule which caused the athlete's displacement from the team seemed to be not a fair one, and our athlete may have been reinstated even if the flags had not been cut from the sign," and that he didn't "see the connection of the Confederate flag with the incident that occurred."

   By January 19th, all three basketball players were reinstated to the team. A biracial committee looked into the charges of racism at LCHS, but no evidence was found. Administrators agreed the rule was too harsh, and lessened the punishment. Blue Oliver got to play again, but the story wasn't over yet. The flag and emblem were still giving the school trouble. Tensions continued to rise, and the school grew divided over the issue.

   Over a year after the original scandal, the school had another incident. On the morning of February 1, 1979, tired from administration foot-dragging and divided opinions, about 250 white students participated in a sit-in in the front foyer of the school. 170 students had also signed a petition to keep the Confederate Flag.

   About 30-40 police units were called onto the scene in case anything got out of hand. Mike Mercer remembers the day well:

   "I was a Freshman when this took place. There was nearly a riot and some students called home to get their parents to sign them out of school. I personally saw quite a few weapons that were brought to school "just in case." At one point, I looked out of a second story classroom window that faced the front of the school. There were police lined up as far as you could see. They stayed outside for the most part but were ready to enter if the riot started."

   Fortunately, nothing happened. The new school Principal, Mr. Kenneth Culbert, got the students to move into the Auditorium. Whites sat in the center section, blacks sat on the right. For 90 minutes, the students voiced their concerns. Tempers did flare, and some students tried to leave to presumably start fighting, but they were reined back in by teachers. "Some emotion was expressed," said Culbert, "and we let them express it. I was generally proud of the student body." 

Loudoun Times-Mirror 2/8/1978 (Loudoun County High School principal Kenneth Culbert
tries to quiet a group of about 300 students who gathered in the school's foyer last
Thursday morning to protest the proposed changing of the school's emblem.)

   The Loudoun Times-Mirror interviewed various students on how they felt about the controversy:

"The Confederate flag represents the white South. Blacks were a part of the white South, but they were slaves -- they weren't really classified as people, they were more like property."  Louis Perry (black senior) 

"To us, the Confederate flag symbolized the South. To black people, it symbolized slavery. I didn't know that." Joe Kaylor (white senior)  

 "I would like to see the Confederate flag kept. The people who want it changed think it represents the Confederacy. It doesn't represent the Confederate States of America. It represents the Loudoun County Raiders." Bobby Gaskill (white senior)

"The Confederate flag really doesn't mean anything to me. It's not a symbol of slavery. Until that man came up here and chopped that thing down, nobody really cared. We never really heard about it." Shelby Jones (black senior)

   The Loudoun Times-Mirror editorial came to the conclusion that "If [the flag] divides the school, creates ill-feelings and disrupts the meaning of the institution, [the flag] should be changed." Many were angered by the editorial and saw it as dismissive of the issue, calling the paper a "coward" and not "Mirror-ing" the position of County residents. Most folks saw the flag as a piece of their history and Loudoun's heritage. "It's all right for blacks to spout off about how African they are, but we Southerners are supposed to give up our symbols because they're offensive to some colored people," wrote Robin Amos.

   Another resident, Lynn McBride, had this to say about the issue:

   "Sometimes I feel as if we are going backwards instead of forward. It doesn't seem possible. That flag is a part of our history and a symbol of a nation divided. It is not exactly something we should be proud of and I can understand how some people would take offense at it. I graduated from LCHS six years ago and I didn't even pay attention to the flag. I'd noticed it, but it didn't bother me enough to cause any commotion. Now the students are more alert to its presence, but no more mature about its meaning. The Confederate flag, once a symbol of the North vs the South, is now a symbol of blacks vs whites. I had hoped we were reaching an age when men are men because of principles and people, as Americans, are united under one flag. Maybe I am wrong. I hope not."

   After the demonstration, Principal Culbert created a student advisory committee of 16 students to discuss what to do about the emblem. "We hope to develop a symbol that would maintain a unified student body and respect tradition," he said.

   The committee decided to keep the Raider on his horse, but agreed it was for the best that a new school flag take the place of the Confederate one. 16 drawings for the new flag were submitted. The final four were unanimously approved by the committee."The final four," said Mr. Culbert, "represent a composite of a number of students' ideas." The final four had all been drawn by alumnus Mrs. Bernie (Abbott) Lite (as mentioned before, the student who originally drew County's emblem in 1960).

The Loudoun Raider March 27, 1979. The four flag designs

   On March 30, students were asked to vote for their favorite design in their homerooms. On April 5, the Loudoun Times Mirror reported that students had "overwhelmingly" chosen Design D, with 305 votes from the 800 students that had voted. Principal Culbert told the Mirror that "there had been no trouble at the school since [January's demonstration] and that most students appeared to be satisfied with the new emblem."

   By the next school year, a physical flag had been made.

LL 1980

   Raiders embraced their new flag. Lord Loudoun 1982 featured the Raider and his new flag on the yearbook cover.

   The flag logo also appeared on the back of the football field's watch tower (which has since been replaced).

LL 1982

   The ax marks on the front sign were patched over. The Raiders on the front sign, however, did not receive new little flags.

LL 1982

LL 1982

   The Raiders did not last long in their stunted form, being taken off the sign completely by 1985.

LL 1985

   During the 03-04 school year, the school sign was redone. The Raiders did not return.

LL 2004

   The school flag itself now resides in view of the front foyer of County.

   What started out as an issue over a dismissal from the basketball team turned into an ugly division over the school mascot and racism. Hopefully, we can learn from experiences like these for the future. The school today continues to be a unified body, or at least not one divided because of the flag.

Update: 6/24/2015

   I was never satisfied with my conclusion to this story. I regularly struggle with conclusions of articles I write. In light of the recent events in Charleston, South Carolina regarding their confederate flag, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit what I wrote.

   We like to think of the past as either better or worse/primitive than it is today. It is scary and disheartening to realize the past is not as far away as we wish it to be. Society takes a while to change. 

   History/the past also doesn't come with ribbons that can be tied into a nice, neat bow at the very end. The best metaphor that can come to my mind is one domino falling over, hitting five other dominoes, and so forth, until you are left with a big mess of dominoes on the ground. Somebody has to clean it up, and, in the process, they hit more dominoes. When the dominoes are all picked up, many don't want to acknowledge the mess that was made before*, but that doesn't mean the mess wasn't there, and won't happen again. By acknowledging the past and its indiscretions, we will learn how problems can be solved, and what missteps to avoid.

   We have only begun to scratch the surface on many of our civil rights issues. While the saga at Loudoun County High School ended long ago, there are many similar situations around the world that will occur for centuries to come. We all want to be the best society we can for today and for the future. We must be vigilant to keep our eyes and ears open and know our history. We, as a society, will have to be ready for when those moments present themselves, else we will fail to grow and reach our goal.

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   On a side note, during my senior year of high school (2009-2010), the Raider Riot, the student spirit squad, debuted a new flag.

Raider Riot Flag
(Sorry for the blurry picture, this is the best I have)

   Is it an interesting coincidence that this flag resembles the other designs put up to vote? Did some alumni who liked another design help create this flag?

   Actually, it is the flag of Bosnia (with "Raider Riot" spray-painted on it)

   Well, one can always hope for conspiracy theories. That does it for today! 

Sources:

Mike Mercer, LCHS class of 1982

Becky Ott, LCHS class of 1980
Sara Briggs, LCHS class of 2010 (for Raider Riot flag info)

Loudoun Times Mirror 1978-1979 (via Balch Library)

The Monitor 1979

The Loudoun Raider, 1979

Lord Loudoun yearbooks 1964, 1978, 1980, 1982, 2004
The Washington Post 1978-1979

   *This reasoning is why you will never see a comprehensive history of Loudoun County High School on its official website. 

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Enjoy other LCHS Articles from the same author:

Loudoun County High School: A History

Loudoun County High School: Decorative Wooden Urns
Obama at LCHS Recap
LCHS: Columns
LCHS: Murals

LCHS: Murals Update 1

LCHS: Murals Update 2

The First LCHS