Fired From Government Job Over Robert E. Lee

Via SHNV

The issue: a parent-school issue…not my job as the Chair of the JROTC Department. I asked if my son could wear his Dixie Outfitter t-shirt and the principal decided I should be fired. After winning, I found that I was in a hostile work environment and applied to teach graduate studies at the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I had taught there before.

In 2004 I returned to the faculty and garnered excellent annual ratings for thirteen years. However, a fellow faculty member and my new supervisor at the campus I transferred to in 2011 decided that my pro-Southern sympathies were not politically correct. They filed a formal complaint against me and threatened punishment. Despite just receiving another excellent annual report in 2017, I was told I was being terminated. No reason was given but it is obviously that the issue that garnered a formal counseling and threat of punishment previously, was being made good-on.

I lost my job due to the complaints of a couple of carpetbaggers who do not understand Southern culture and automatically assume anyone who is proud of their Southern heritage is a “racist”. In fact, a teaching colleague, Joe Judge, accused me twice of being a member of the KKK for this very reason. He had no evidence or proof of racism, only the fact that I am proud of my Southern ancestors.

Ed Kennedy
LtCol, US Army (ret)
New Market, Alabama
[email protected]