Colorado School Flunks History, Suspends Student Over ‘Racist’ Gadsden Flag Patch on Backpack

Jaiden’s story reveals the problem with a sprawling government that thinks it gets to decide what symbols and speech are appropriate to share and what is verboten.

A child at The Vanguard School, a tuition-free charter school in Colorado Springs, reportedly was suspended from school for having a Gadsden Flag patch on his backpack. 

The story comes from Connor Boyack, president of the Libertas Institute and creator of the Tuttle Twins children’s books, who dropped a video Tuesday featuring a mother and a 12-year-old boy identified as Jaiden, who were told by school officials that the patch had to be removed “due to is origins with slavery and slave trade.” 

Many online noted that the school official was wrong about the flag’s origins. 

The Gadsden Flag, which depicts a coiled snake on a yellow banner above the words “Don’t Tread on Me,” did not originate under the banner of slavery. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains the actual origins of the flag.

“The rattlesnake symbol originated in the 1754 political cartoon ‘Join, or Die’ published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. The cartoon, which depicted the colonies divided as segments of a cut-up snake, exhorted the colonists to unite in the face of the French and Indian War (1754–63). 

The symbol was later used to represent unity during the Revolutionary War. One observer, writing to the Pennsylvania Journal in December 1775, claimed that a drum of the newly created Marine Corps displayed a rattlesnake alongside the motto ‘Don’t tread on me!’”

In the video, Jaiden’s mother attempted to explain the Gadsden flag’s origins to a school official, to no avail. 

“I’m here to enforce the policy that was provided by the district,” a woman tells the mother.

Boyack shared an email written by Jeff Yocum, Operations Director at The Vanguard School, explaining why the historic symbol was deemed verboten by district officials.  

The symbol is “tied to the Confederate flag and other white-supremacy groups, including ‘Patriot’ groups,” wrote Yocum, who included links to several online opinion pieces.