Flaunting the Freak Flag: Karr v. Schmidt and the great hair debate in American high schools, 1965-1975

Journal of American History

Volumn 91, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 522-543

  Graham, Gael ^a  

^a WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 70450104612     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3660710     Document Type: Review

References (217)

1. Chesley Karr telephone interview by Gael Graham, Nov. 26, 2002, notes (in Gael Graham's possession). "Freak flag" is from David Crosby, "Almost Cut My Hair," performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, Déjà Vu (compact disk; Atlantic 82649; 1970).
2. Most works that examine the movements of the 1960s include some discussion of the college student revolt against in loca parentis policies. Few do more than mention high school student activism.
3. See Terry M. Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York, 1995);
4. John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961-1974 (New York, 1991);
5. David Burner, Making Peace with the Sixties (Princeton, 1996);
6. Stewart Burns, Social Movements of the 1960s: Searching for Democracy (Boston, 1990);
7. David Chalmers, And the Crooked Places Made Straight: The Struggle for Social Change in the 1960s (Baltimore, 1991);
8. Dominick Cavallo, A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History (New York, 1999);
9. David Farber, The Age of Great Dreams: America in the 1960s (New York, 1994);
10. David Farber, ed., The Sixties: From Memory to History (Chapel Hill, 1994);
11. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York, 1993);
12. Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era (New York, 1993);
13. Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, 2004);
14. Ron Jacobs, The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (New York, 1997);
15. Landon Y. Jones, Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation (New York, 1980);
16. Kim McQuaid, The Anxious Years: America in the Vietnam-Watergate Era (New York, 1989);
17. Douglas T. Miller, On Our Own: Americans in the Sixties (Lexington, Mass., 1996);
18. Edward P. Morgan, The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America (Philadelphia, 1991);
19. Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby-Boom Generation (Toronto, 1996);
20. Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press (New York, 1985);
21. Thomas Powers, Vietnam, the War at Home: Vietnam and the American People, 1964-1968 (Boston, 1984);
22. Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York, 1973);
23. Edward K. Spann, Democracy's Children: The Young Rebels of the 1960s and the Power of Ideals (Wilmington, Del., 2003);
24. David Steigerwald, The Sixties and the End of Modern America (New York, 1995);
25. and Tom Wells, The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley, 1994). Similarly, works that focus on education in this era generally ignore high school activism.
26. See Gerald Lee Gutek, American Education, 1945-2000: A History and Commentary (Prospect Heights, 2000);
27. Donald H. Parkerson and Jo Ann Parkerson, Transitions in American Education: A Social History of Teaching (New York, 2001);
28. Diane Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (New York, 1983);
29. David B. Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980 (New York, 1982);
30. and Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
31. On activism at a single high school in Los Angeles, see Marc Jason Gilbert, "Lock and Load High: The Vietnam War Comes to a Los Angeles Secondary School," in The Vietnam War on Campus: Other Voices, More Distant Drums, ed. Marc Jason Gilbert (Westport, 2001), 174-193
32. On high school antiwar sentiment and the First Amendment, see Charles Howlett, "When the Bell Rings: Public High Schools, the Courts, and Anti-Vietnam War Dissent,"
33. Charles Howlett, "When the Bell Rings: Public High Schools, the Courts, and Anti-Vietnam War Dissent," ibid., 194-215.
34. For single chapters on high school activism and dissent, see Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York, 1999);
35. and Grace Palladino, Teenagers: An American History (New York, 1996).
36. The haircut cases also occurred at a historically fortuitous moment. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the pressure on federal dockets grew, judges sorted cases by how much time they believed each merited. As a result, the number of appeals affirmed without a written opinion increased dramatically; by 1977 over a third of all appeals were mutely affirmed. Thus as the number of cases involving high school students increased, it became harder to understand judicial opinion. Deborah J. Barrow and Thomas G. Walker, A Court Divided: The Fifih Circuit Court of Appeals and the Politics of Judicial Reform (New Haven, 1988), 149.
37. Anthony Synnott, "Shame and Glory: A Sociology of Hair," British Journal of Sociology, 38 (Sept. 1987), 381-413;
38. Wendy Cooper, Hair: Sex, Society, and Symbolism (New York, 1971);
39. Diane Simon, Hair: Public, Politicat, Extremely Personal (New York, 2000).
40. On the Puritan condemnation of long hair, see Dale Gaddy, Rights and Freedoms of Public School Students: Directions from the 1960s (Topeka, 1971), 25.
41. Zitkala-Sâ, "Growing Up Indian in a White Man's World," in The American Record: Images of the Nation's Past, ed. William Graebner and Leonard L. Richards (2 vols., Boston, 2001), II, 67-73;
42. Helen Bradley Foster, New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South (New York, 1997);
43. Shane White and Graham White, Stylin': African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, 1998);
44. Noliwe M. Rooks, Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women (New Brunswick, 1996);
45. Lois W. Banner, American Beauty (New York, 1983);
46. Ruth P. Rubinstein, Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture (Boulder, 2001);
47. Penny Storm, Functions of Dress: Tool of Culture and the Individual (Englewood Cliffs, 1987);
48. James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy, eds., Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology (Boston, 1977);
49. Justine M. Cordwell and Ronald A. Schwarz, The Fabrics of Culture: The Anthropology of Clothing and Adornment (New York, 1979).
50. Ian McDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (New York, 1994);
51. Philip Norman, Shout! The Beatles in Their Generation (New York, 1981). Long hair surfaced as a sign of cultural opposition before the Beatles. Elvis Presley's long, greased-up hair formed part of his bad-boy image, but with his three kinds of hair pomade and eye shadow, Elvis represented the artifice and illusion of the 1950s far more than the "natural" style of the 1960s. A clearer genealogical line from 1960s Ionghairs runs back to the beats and to pro-Fidel Castro Americans (who admired the hairy virility of the Cuban rebel leader).
52. Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Boston, 1994), 68, 71, 91, 172;
53. Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill, 2000), 135, 151;
54. Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left (London, 1993), 112-13;
55. Van Gosse, "'We Are All Highly Adventurous': Fidel Castro and the Romance of the White Guerilla, 1957-1958," in Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945-1966, ed. Christian G. Appy (Amherst, 2000), 238-256
56. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1965), 54-57. High school students of color rarely sued their schools over hair regulations; when they did, the issue often involved something other than hair length. For example, Darius Lovelace, an eighteen-year-old African American student in Pennsylvania, sued after he was suspended for wearing a mustache, as did three black students from Wheeler County, Georgia.
57. See Lovelace v. Leechburg Area School District, 310 F. Supp. 579 (1970);
58. and Stevenson v. Wheeler County Board of Education, 306 F. Supp. 97 (1969).
59. Only one Asian American sued over hair length; he claimed no connection between his hair and racial pride. Yoo v. Moynihan, 28 Conn. Supp. 375 (1969).
60. The parents of one fifth-grade Native American child sued, claiming that the short-hair rule "violated their parenral rights to raise their children according to their religious, cultural, and moral values." Hatch v. Goerke, 502 F.2d 1189 (1974).
61. Bob Greene, Be True to Your School: A Diary of 1964 (New York, 1987), viii, ix, 53, 271, 282-83;
62. New York Times, Sepr. 13, 1965, sec. 1, p. 37.
63. In this first haircut case neither the student plaintiffs nor the school defendants attributed any symbolic meaning to hair. The students did, however, write a song about their confrontation with the school that got local airtime. Ferrell v. Dallas Independent School District, 261 F. Supp. 545 (1966), 392 F.2d 697 (1968), 393 U.S. 856 (1968).
64. Jones v. Day, 127 Miss. 136 (1921);
65. Pugsley v. Sellmeyer, 158 Ark. 247 (1923);
66. Palladino, Teenagers, 162;
67. Arlene S. Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty (New York, 1991);
68. James Burkhart Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York, 1986), 16;
69. Board of Education, Buffalo, New York, School-Community Coordination, "Recommendations of the Inter-High School Student Council for Appropriate Dress of Students in High School," in American Record, ed. Graebner and Richards, II, 320-21. I have seen no other references to the Buffalo Plan, so its influence is unclear. Some schools did not adopt dress codes immediately. Shawnee High School in Wolf Lake, Illinois, for example, did not have a dress code until 1972.
70. See Copelandv. Hawkins, 352 F. Supp. 1022 (1973).
71. General hair rules appear in Laine v. Dittman, 259 N.E.2d 824 (1970).
72. Detailed hair regulations are cited in Arnold v. Carpenter, 459 R2d 939 (1972).
73. Some works on either the Chicano or the civil rights movements make it clear that high school students often served as the shock troops of the movements. Even here, however, historians portray high school students more as ad-libbing walk-ons than as primary actors. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Urbana, 1994), 126;
74. Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens, Ga., 1995), 156, 214;
75. Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley, 1995), 225, 271;
76. Edward J. Escobar, "The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968-1971," Journal of American History, 79 (March 1993), 1483-1514;
77. Carlos Muñoz, Youth, Identity, Power: The Chicano Movement (New York, 1989), 99-103;
78. David F. Gomez, Somos Chicanos: Strangers in Our Own Land (Boston, 1973), 100-110;
79. John Staples Shockley, Chicano Revolt in a Texas Town (Notre Dame, 1974);
80. Ignacio M. Garcia, Chicanismo: The Forging of a Militant Ethos among Mexican Americans (Tucson, 1997);
81. Ernesto B. Vigil, The Crusade for Justice: Chicano Militancy and the Government's War on Dissent (Madison, 1999). Jonathan Zimmerman pays some heed to the initiatives of African American students in changing racist history textbooks and adding black studies to the high school curriculum. But he also asserts that most controversies involving schools "stormed over the schoolhouse rather than inside it." That was certainly not true in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
82. Zimmerman, Whose America?, 108-128, 222.
83. John W. Johnson, The Struggle for Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s (Lawrence, Kans., 1997), 3-27;
84. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969)
85. Tinker v. Des Moines, 393 U.S. at 503.
86. On high school press freedom, see Shanley v. Northeast Independent School District, 462 F.2d 960 (1972);
87. Quarterman v. Byrd, 453 F.2d 54 (1971)
88. and Scoville v. Board of Education of Joliet Township High School District, 425 R2d 10 (1970).
89. Student political expression was handled in Guzick v. Drebus, 305 F. Supp. 472 (1969).
90. Due process in high school discipline was established in Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975).
91. El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5.
92. For the statements by John R. Karr, Chesley's father, see El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 9, 1970, p. A1
93. El Paso Times and El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5.
94. In the El Paso school system, 162 of 21,000 high school students violated the dress code, but all of them-save Karr-immediately complied. Ibid., Nov. 13, 1970, p. A10; Karr interview.
95. Karr interview; El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5;
96. El Paso Times ibid., Nov. 12, 1970, p. F1;
97. El Paso Times, ibid., Nov. 13, 1970, p. A10. Citing then-current court cases on hair and student rights, many educators urged school administrators to solicit student input in formulating dress and behavior codes, and to justify such rules by educational necessity rather than authority.
98. See David Martin, "The Rights and Liberties of Srudents," High School Journal, 57 (Oct. 1973), 24-38;
99. and Harry C. Mallois, "The Emerging Law of Due Process for Public High School Students,"
100. and Harry C. Mallois, "The Emerging Law of Due Process for Public High School Students," ibid. (Nov. 1973), 83-90.
101. El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. B1
102. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 9, 1970, p. A1
103. El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5
104. El Paso Times, ibid, Nov. 12, 1970, p. F1
105. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 10, 1970, p. B5
106. El Paso Herald-Post, ibid., Nov. 11, 1970, p. B10
107. El Paso Herald-Post, ibid, Nov. 12, 1970, p. D2;
108. Karr v. Schmidt, 320 F. Supp. 728 (1970).
109. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 9, 1970, p. A1;
110. El Paso Herald-Post, ibid., Nov. 10, 1970, p. B5;
111. El Paso Herald-Post, ibid., Nov. 11, 1970, p. B10.
112. El Paso Herald-Post, Ibid., Nov. 10, 1970, p. B5;
113. El Paso Times, Nov. 12, 1970, p. F1;
114. El Paso Times, ibid., Nov. 10, 1970, p. B1
115. The El Paso Times spells Glass's name "Gail."
116. The El Paso Times spells Glass's name "Gail." , Ibid., Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5.
117. El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5;
118. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 11, 1970, p. B10.
119. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 10, 1970, p. B5;
120. El Paso Herald-Post, ibid., Nov. 11, 1970, p. B10.
121. Lambert v. Marushi, 322 F. Supp. 326 (1971)
122. Griffin v. Tatum, 425 F.2d 201 (1970);
123. Livingston v. Swan-quist, 314 F. Supp. 1 (1970).
124. Scot Brown, Fighting for US: Maulana Karenga, the US Organization, and Black Cultural Nationalism (New York, 2003);
125. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiafìcas, Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy (New York, 2001);
126. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York, 2001);
127. Robin D. G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston, 2002);
128. Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill, 1999);
129. William L. Van Deburg, A New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement in American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago, 1992);
130. K. Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics (Chapel Hill, 1999).
131. The demands of black high school students are documented in Donald Reeves, Notes of a Processed Brother (New York, 1971), 81-82, 115-16, 212-13, 309-310, 334-35;
132. James Ross Irwin, A Ghetto Principal Speaks Out: A Decade of Crisis in Urban Public Schools (Detroit, 1973), 124, 157-159, 213-16;
133. and Sylvia Berry Williams, Hassling (Boston, 1970), 182-85. For works on the Chicano movement, see n. 10 above.
134. Most Native American high school students still attended schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs; a group of such students demanded an "Indian Students' Bill of Rights" from Congress. U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Senate Hearings before the Committee on Appropriations, Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriations, 92 Cong., 2 sess., April 11, 1972, pp. 3728-3757
135. Fred Halstead, an antiwar organizer and member of the Socialist Workers Party, claimed that over a million students boycotted school on April 26, 1968, "many" of them high school students. He also documented efforts of the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC) to court high school students by promoting a national high school students' bill of rights. Fred Halstead, Out Now! A Participant's Account of the American Movement against the Vietnam War (New York, 1978), 386-87, 530-531 Similar proposals for a high school students' bill of rights-sometimes advocated by students, sometimes by adults-popped up in a number of cities, including Detroit and New York.
136. See Irwin, Ghetto Principal Speaks Out, 186-90;
137. and Reeves, Notes of a Processed Brother, 212-16, 460-462
138. The classic account of the antiwar movement (which ignores high school students) is Charles DeBenedetti with Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, 1990).
139. On gender in the 1950s and the emergence of feminism, see Beth L. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore, 1988);
140. Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis, 1989);
141. Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York, 1979);
142. Betty Friedan, It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement (New York, 1976);
143. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 1988);
144. and Ruth Rosen The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York 2000). High school feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s left few traces in the historical record. But a massive tome by the Vietnam War protester Mitchell Goodman includes one article on high school feminism and sources on high school activism.
145. Mitchell Goodman, The Movement toward a New America: The Beginnings of a Long Revolution (a Collage) a What? (Philadelphia, 1970), 24, 54, 80-82, 169, 172-76, 230, 267-89, 541-42.
146. For the principal's statement, see Breen v. Kahl, 296 F. Supp. 702 (1969)
147. Judge Suttle's opinion mentioned the long-haired Founding Fathers and jurists who used long-haired wigs "to enhance their appearance of dignity." Karr v. Schmidt, 320 F. Supp. at 728. In his letter to the editors of the El Paso Times, Elroy Bode noted that long-haired Comanches were not "namby-pambies," short-haired Nazis were hardly "saints," and Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill were not "un-American."
148. See El Paso Times, Dec. 12, 1970, p. A4.
149. The expressive uses of long hair may be seen in Pendley v. Mingus Union High School District No.4 of Yavapai County, 504 P.2d 919 (1972);
150. Giangreco v. Center School District, 313 F. Supp. 776 (1969)
151. Parker v. Fry, 323 F. Supp. 728 (1970)
152. and Laine v. Dittman, 259 N.E.2d at 824.
153. John Karr's argument was in the El Paso Times, Nov. 11, 1970, p. A5
154. The school administration's assertion that the El Paso dress code was democratically decided was undermined by the testimony of the superintendent of El Paso public schools, Dr. H. E. Charles, that an "advisory group" had sought to abolish the dress code; since Charles regarded that as "extreme," he replaced the advisory group with an ad hoc committee where students were the minority. El Paso Herald-Post, Nov. 12, 1970, p. D2
155. Karr v. Schmidt, 320 F. Supp. at 728.
156. El Paso Times, Nov. 22, 1970, p. A6.
157. For an overview of activist high school student opinions, see John Birmingham, Our Time Is Now: Notes from the High School Underground (New York, 1970);
158. Marc Libarle and Tom Seligson, The High School Revolutionaries (New York, 1970);
159. and United States Commission on Civil Rights, What Students Want (New York, 1971).
160. Liberal adult opinion appears in Kenneth L. Fish, Conflict and Dissent in the High School (New York, 1970);
161. American Civil Liberties Union, Academic Freedom in the Secondary Schools (New York, 1971);
162. and Robert L. Ackerly and Ivan B. Gluckman, The Reasonable Exercise of Authority, II (Reston, Va., 1976).
163. For conservative adult opinion, see Institute for Development of Educational Activities, Dissent and Disruption in the Schools: A Handbook for School Administrators (Dayton, 1969).
164. For the liberal argument that the young were maturing more quickly, see Margaret Mead, "Youth Revolt: The Future Is Now," Saturday Review, Jan. 10, 1970, pp. 23-25;
165. and Kenneth Fish, "Coping with Activism in the Secondary Schools," Education Digest, 35 (Oct. 1969), 8-11.
166. Roger Rapoport and Laurence J. Kirshbaum, Is the Library Burning? (New York, 1969), 130;
167. "Three of Five Principals Report Protest Activities," Ohio Schools, March 14, 1969, pp. 31-32;
168. U.S. House of Representatives report cited in Irwin, Ghetto Principal Speaks Out, 112-114
169. A study of incoming college students showed that, although as high school students only 12% had demonstrated against the war in Vietnam and 20% participated in racial protests and demonstrations, 45% had challenged high school rules. Alan E. Bayer, Alexander W. Astin, and Robert F. Boruch, Social Issues and Protest Activity: Recent Student Trends (Washington, 1970), 24, table 3.
170. For the Life poll, see "What People Think about Their High Schools," Life, May 16, 1969, pp. 23-33.
171. Many other polls emphasized the desire of students to have a voice in making rules and shaping curriculum, and educators hammered home this theme in their speeches and writings. Moreover, in 1971 the venerable White House Conference on Children and Youth (established in 1909) split to create the White House Conference on Youth. Adult experts presided over previous conferences; in 1971, however, two-thirds of the participants were 14 to 24; 40% were high school students. The overriding theme of the conference was the desire of young people to participate more fully in school and society.
172. White House Conference on Youth, Report of the White House Conference on Youth, April 18-22, 1971 (Washington, 1971);
173. Karr v. Schmidt, 451 F.2d 1023 (1971);
174. Kan v. Schmidt, 401 U.S. 930 (1971);
175. El Paso Herald-Post, Dec. 29, 1971, p. C8;
176. El Paso Times, Dec. 29, 1971, p. A2.
177. Karr interview; El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 1, 1971, p. A4.
178. El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 1, 1971, p. A4;
179. El Paso Times, Feb. 2, 1971, p. A9;
180. El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 2, 1971, p. A6;
181. El Paso Times, Feb. 3, 1971, p. A13;
182. El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 3, 1971, p. A2
183. El Paso Times, Feb. 4, 1971, p. B1
184. El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 5, 1971, p. B9
185. El Paso Times, Feb. 6, 1971, p. B1
186. El Paso Times, Feb. 1, 1971, p. A4;
187. El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 2, 1971, p.B2;
188. El Paso Times, Feb. 4, 1971, p.
189. Letters to the editors of the El Paso Times and El Paso Herald-Post on the court case, hair, and school rules ran from Feb. 1 to Feb. 18, 1971.
190. El Paso Times, Feb. 5, 1971, p. A4
191. John A. Baldwin to editor, ibid., Feb. 11, 1971, p. A4.
192. El Paso Times, Nov. 13, 1970, p. A10.
193. Dan Nelson to editor, ìbid., Feb. 5, 1971, p A4.
194. Karr interview. The courts querulous tone reflected its burden of cases. The Fifth Circuit then included all the Deep South states-Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida-and the court was swamped with cases involving such issues as desegregation, civil rights, criminal rights, and voter redistricting. Karr v. Schmidt, 460 F.2d 609, 618 (1972).
195. Karr v. Schmidt, 460 F.2d at 619, 621.
196. David E. Shelton, "The Legal Aspects of Male Students' Hair Grooming Policies in the Public Schools of the United States" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1980), chap. 3.
197. The school hair cases (all but one involving high school students) appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court were Stevenson v. Board of Education, 400 U.S. at 957;
198. Ferrell v. Dallas, 393 U.S. at 856;
199. Bra v. Kahl, 398 U.S. at 937;
200. Jackson v. Dorrier, 400 U.S. 850 (1970);
201. Freeman v. Flake, 405 U.S. 1032 (1972);
202. King v. Saddleback Jr. College District, 404 U.S. 979 (1971);
203. Karr v. Schmidt, 409 U.S. at 989;
204. Olff v. East Side Union High School District, 404 U.S. 1042 (1972);
205. and Holsapple v. Woods, 419 U.S. 901 (1974). Today, Karr is a successful businessman, has a ponytail five inches long, and supports his son's rebellion against the "arcane requirements" of his high school dress code. See Karr interview.
206. H. G. Solberg to editor, El Paso Herald-Post, Feb. 11, 1971, p. B2.
207. Gaddy, Rights and Freedoms of Public School Students;
208. Irving J. Sloan, Youth and the Law: Rights, Privileges, and Obligations (Dobbs Ferry, 1974);
209. American Civil Liberties Union, Academic Freedom in the Secondary Schools;
210. H. C. Hudgins Jr., School Administrators and the Courts: Review of Recent Decisions (Arlington, 1975).
211. Cavallo, Fiction of the Past, 90-92. Even high school radicals rarely articulated the level of abstraction that Cavallo posited. They were more likely to attack racism, capitalism, and militarism than America's obsession with security or rationality.
212. For example, among 18 high school and 2 junior high radicals interviewed in 1969, only 3 alluded to the critique that Cavallo associated with older Ionghairs. Libarle and Seligson, High School Revolutionaries, 3-23, 161-171
213. Kenneth Cmiel, "The Politics of Incivility," in American Record, ed. Graebner and Richards, II, 340-357
214. Members of the Vietnam Veterans against the War, who often showed up for antiwar demonstrations and theater with long hair and scruffy fatigues, broadcast a still more pointed message.
215. See Richard Stacewicz, Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans against the War (New York, 1997);
216. and Andrew E. Hunt, The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans against the War (New York, 1999).
217. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo (New York, 1966).