September 10, 2024 • 39 mins
After dubious claims from the school board about the origin of the Rebels team name, Akilah dives deep into the history of the high school, the influence of classic cinema, and the term Rebel historically in the south.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My own black collars going.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
On overlanding I.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ninth Planet Audio dot com. We're over landing, You're no work.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And starting my journey to change the BHS mascot. I
figured I should go right to the source and reach
out directly to the school.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
And then you got in touch with the school board.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yes, so okay, So I couldn't wait. I sent the
videmail to the head of the school board and I
can just read it. Yeah, I said, Hello, is Bird.
I'm Akhil Hughes, a writer, comedian, and podcast host who was,
fun fact, the first student representative to the Board of
Education in Kentucky history. I graduated from Buncuta High School
in two thousand and five. I'm writing you because I'm
doing a podcast about schools in the South and Florence's
(00:50):
very cool history. We also want to talk about biscuits.
I'm having trouble finding updated contact information for anyone at
BCHS who can help, and unfortunately Missus Black, the principal
and also my our fine arts teacher, hasn't been able
to assist us. Is there a time that would be
good to visit the play. I even had an end
with the principal Stacy Black who used to be one
of my teachers back in the early odds. So surely
(01:10):
she'd be willing to talk with me and realize that
this is a change the school desperately needed. Right, Maybe
the podcast ends here, and all I have to do
is make her aware of the Raci's mascot and she'll
be a leader and make the change. Listener, I was
so wrong. Long story short, All of my attempts to
connect and speak with someone who actually worked at BCHS
or someone on the school board, literally anyone involved in
(01:32):
education at all, were pushed off to a woman named
Barbara Brady, the Schools and Community Relations coordinator, basically the
PR woman for the school district. And so yeah, Barbara
has uncceed everyone and essentially is just like have you
seen the movie?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I gotta read it? She says, Hello Aquila.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Our school board president, Karen Bird has referred this matter
to me. As far as the name Rebels goes, the
mascot image was removed long ago.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Reader, that was six years ago. Long ago.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The school is going to be seventy years old, so
you know, relativity. But in any case, long ago, as
you know, the Rebel's nickname remains. The nickname was chosen
by the first graduating class of Boone County High School,
taken from the popular nineteen fifty five movie Rebel Without
a Cause.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's worth watching.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
It's a coming of age movie about emotionally confused middle
class teens. There are more than one hundred high schools
across the country with the nickname Rebels, many of whom
also took the name from the movie at that time.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Half of them are high schools in the North.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So if you're like Rebel without a Cause like the
James Dean movie, did I hear that right?
Speaker 5 (02:40):
You're telling me up.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
What you You say one thing, he says another, and
everybody changes back again. Akila, didn't you say in the
first episode there was an actual mascot who was unmistakably
a Confederate general in a light blue uniform, feathered cap,
and enormous mustache. Yeah, I sure did, but don't. We're
definitely going to get into why someone would bring up
fifties heart throbs in an email about Civil War mascots,
(03:06):
But the point is that this email was clearly sent
to discourage further action and to get me to essentially
kick rocks. Not only was this message not gonna discourage us,
we were already on our way to Florence. We knew
that we needed to have our feet on the ground
to build a coalition of allies and show Miss Brady,
along with BCHS and the school board, that I'm not
going anywhere. So, fueled by an unrelenting determination and desire
(03:30):
to eat Skyline Chile, I arrived in Florence in September
of twenty twenty three to truly start building this movement.
And it just so happened to be homecoming week at BCHS,
the perfect time for an alumni to come home.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I can't believe I grew up here.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I've been saying that since I got here. Is like,
you know, it's just it's it's very small European wax center. Wow,
that's a big deal for me.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That would have been a real game changer in high school.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, you're gonna make it right up here. And then
we're coming up on the high school. So it's gonna
be on a right it's rebel way now, yikes. So
this this street, the other street is still Shawan Alexander,
I think.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
But you have Rebel Drive. Wow, big signs main entrance
to the high school. Ooh, what is this? This is
the performing arts center? What we did not have this?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
This the school must be so different inside. They gotta listen.
Shawn Alexander way for non football people. Shawn Alexander was
a legendary NFL player for the Seattle Seahawks who graduated
from Boone in the nineties. He's also a black man
who played for a team in the South called the Rebels.
His name being on one street of the school and
Rebel Drive being the name of the other street is
(04:46):
kind of the whole problem. In a nutshell. You see
kids in that window.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I think that might be the band room. Yeah, something
like that. All of this was a parking lot. This
is wild. There's money here now.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I know that Seawan Alexander had like a big hand
in the athletic center because he got them like sponsored
by Nike for a season like stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But this is honestly shocking.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
We've come to the history portion of the small town
high school. So buckle up, because in a story where
everyone is pointing to timeline, receipts and attention, details matter.
In nineteen fifty four, they decided to consolidate Burlington, Florence,
New Haven, and Hebern High schools into one new building,
Boone County High School, which is why it's named after
(05:31):
the county rather than the town. The building was erected
in nineteen fifty four on what was then the edge
of Florence. Boone County had a total of five hundred
and fifteen students enrolled in the school that year, along
with eighteen teachers and Principal Chester Goodridge. The story goes
like this. The students were allowed to vote on a mascot.
After several options were shot down, such as the Boone
(05:53):
County Bison or the Boone County Moonshiners, Principal Goodridge was
fed up and called the students rebels. The movie Rebel
without a Call was all the rage, and who wouldn't
want to be James Dean smoking in that leather jacket,
you know, the epitome of cool in nineteen fifty five.
It would be like if they were being formed today,
they'd be the Boone County Wednesdays or the Boone County Barbies.
(06:13):
Honestly legit, But I digress. The story we've been told
ends with the students choosing rebels as their mascot. Today,
Boone County has more than thirteen hundred students enrolled, and
it also turns seventy years old in twenty twenty four.
And while we were in town, we knew that we'd
need to deep dive into this possibly probably apocryphal story.
(06:36):
I was a lady rebel, like, when does that even need?
Speaker 6 (06:39):
If Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
With the image of us right here in black and white.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And friends figures a flag or mascot.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Any time you're trying to mess with tradition, you get
to be ready for a serious backlash.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes, and this is Rebel Spirit,
Episode two, History Lessons. So we are at the Burlington Library.
It's the in Boone County. It's the main library for
the area. We just got a really detailed tour of
all of the local history info. So now we're just
(07:21):
digging through archives of yearbooks and newspapers and.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
They have a lot, they have a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
We've got twenty pounds in years nineteen fifty one, the
other yeah, fifty three, I feel twenty three.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And fifty four would be very helpful. All right, So
this is fifteen oh a black man.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
The only one of them.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Is he black.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Also, though, I'm curious if we can find anything about
Rebel Without a Cause when it was first like.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
In a newspaper anywhere around.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I doubt that there was an advertisement that they all saw.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I'm like, we're obsessed with it.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Him back to the first yearbook nineteen fifty five, and
I'm just going to read everything and look at all
of the little handwritten notes.
Speaker 7 (08:14):
There's got to.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Be something somewhere.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
There's nothing that would even slightly allude to the fact
that they love Reout a Cause. Somebody had to have
written the story of this if it happened right like,
it just seems weird that like no one knows that
is stunning. It doesn't even mention it.
Speaker 8 (08:35):
Rebel Lovicause is this pretty seminal film. When it came
out in nineteen fifty five. It was released soon after
James Dean's tragic death. I think he was not even
twenty five, and he died in a tragic automobile accident
on a California freeway. And in the movie they are
drag racing and doing what teenagers do reckless things.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
This is doctor Emily Carmen, an associate professor of Film
and Media Studies at Chapman University. Her primary research focuses
on classic Hollywood cinema.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
It really was this statement at the time, especially with
the director Nicholas Ray critiquing American conformity culture, conspicuous consumption.
This is the great economic boom of the fifties after
the scarcity of the Depression and the war years.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And this is a huge hit film, right, like it
takes over the country. How do you then quantify its
national effects?
Speaker 8 (09:29):
Even if it wasn't digital like it is now where
you can get shock waves around the world, there was
still a big pumblicity campaign. So when a film, I
mean and when James Dean died, that's still national new internetion, right,
so there would still be a huge awareness unless the
town really had limited access to national publications. But I
(09:51):
still feel like James Dean dying would get from page
news in a local paper.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Okay, So from what we can salute, presuming people in
Florence had access to the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. The
October twenty fifth, nineteen fifty five issue says that it
is opening Wednesday at the RKO Palace in Cincinnati. That
was opening weekend across the country.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And there is a.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Big picture of James Dean included with the description, so
we can agree the movie was a big deal. But
it wasn't until months later January twenty ninth and thirtieth,
nineteen fifty six that Rebel Without a Cause came to Florence,
where it played the Florence Drive In. Yes, the Drive
in in January. That previous fall, they announced the introduction
(10:34):
of electric InCAR heaters, so that and I quote, patrons
may now enjoy living room comfort even in sub zero
weather for those that weren't interested in freezing their cars.
Rebel without a Cause also played that week indoors at
the Gaiety Theater in nearby Erlinger, Okay. So between the
two theaters, Rebel without a Cause played in the area
for a total of three days in late January. Both
(10:56):
screened on Sunday and Monday, the twenty ninth and thirtieth
the Gaiety he also had it on the thirty first.
That's it if you miss seeing it. The VCR wouldn't
be in living rooms for another thirty years.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
I teach a class on nineteen fifties, cinema culture. And
I remember taking classes in literature and colleg nineteen fifties
when I was a student, and I think that the
fifties was a really tumultuous decade, even though it's remembered
as this, you know, Dell, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, exactly. Here's just some other important dates while we're
in the fifties. The decision on Brown versus Board of
Education was issued on May seventeenth, nineteen fifty four. On
May thirty first, nineteen fifty five, the Supreme Court dropped
the sequel Brown two, demanding the implementation of desegregation with
all deliberate speed, because as always, we need to remind
folks about equality. September fourth, nineteen fifty seven was the
(11:48):
day the Little Rock nine, nine black students attempted to
enroll at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to send federal troops to
make sure these little kids could attend school without facing
violence from racist adults. One last one, September twelfth, nineteen
fifty eight, the Supreme Court ruled on Cooper versus Aaron,
(12:08):
which prohibited state laws from undermining the Supreme Court's authority.
All right, So the nineteen fifties was a lot more
than soda shops and leather jackets, and we're gonna get
into that in a lot more detail in a minute.
But let's get back to Rebel Without a Cause, because
here we are talking to one of the leading authorities
of classic cinema. Surely she's heard of a high school
sports team naming themselves after this seminal film, right.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
No, I've not. So that was intriguing when I got
your your email request. It's like, I've never heard that. Yeah,
I mean, if you want to be I think it's
cool to be the rebels from Rebel That a Cause.
But the mascot needs to be like a cool red
jacket and blue je.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Back hair, white tea has a car like that.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
Absolutely, the imagery just does not add up to that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Okay, So, doctor Carmen may have never heard of a
high school tea naming themselves after Rebel Without a Cause,
But that's the story we've been told over and over
and over again. It's that these kids just loved Jimmy
Dean so much that they named the team after him.
And it's not only the boone County Rebels. Remember, according
to an email that we got from Barbara Brady, which
I will read again because I'm petty, there are more
(13:18):
than one hundred high schools across the country with the
name Rebels, many of whom also took the name from
the movie at the time. This isn't just a story,
it is the official line of the Boone County School District.
So certainly this has to match up to the relevant facts, right,
So this issue is October seventh, nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Is that Thursday?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And they have an article basic local News amount of
plant food and fertilizers.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Importance is the county agent.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Boone County High School. The athletic teams were dubbed the
Rebels by the student body in a recent school wide
vote conducted by the journalism class. The Rebel football team
made its first home appearance on the new Boone County
High School field Thursday night, September thirtieth. Twelve girls led
the Rebel cheering section. It's right here in black and
white in print in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So they Lion, They Lion.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The first year of Boone County High School is from
September seventh, nineteen fifty four to the first graduation on
May twentieth, nineteen fifty five. Friends, they were still filming
Rebel without a Cause when that graduation took place. They
were called the Rebels a year before the movie was released.
So no, they are not named after Rebel without a Cause.
Representatives for the education system in Boone County, Kentucky are
(14:42):
simply lying. It's also just funny that, like, all it
took was coming to the library and we figured.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It out in like five minutes.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
There's no interrogating what people are told here. It's as
you were told and they pass it down and that's
good enough. When we return, we're going to go from
brown versus board to brown versus everybody the nineteen sixties,
we'll be right back. This is sixty four. Whoa loo,
(15:15):
I feel like this is like, you know, as the
school's integrating, allegedly, we'll start to see the pushback. Yeah,
JFK visited Boone County during his campaign. Why did JFK
come here?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sixty nine yearbook?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
There's no mention of JFK dying. Okay, so it's not
explicitly racist yet.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
No, there we are.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, there's the big Confederate flag at the football game
nineteen sixty eight, and no one's acting like it's a
big deal. But it's like a sea of young white
kids in the sixties. They're like all standing at this
gate watching the football game. But flung over the gate
that they're like standing at is a huge Confederate flag.
It spans like eight kids, and there's a kid that's
(16:05):
probably five standing right there with it, touching it. So
it seems like it's definitely just it doesn't seem like
it's not normal at all, Like there's no nothing's pointing
it out. Mister Jerry Johnson serves as judge for the
mock trial, so it's a mock trial and they've got
a Confederate flag and judges and the judge has it
on his hat too.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, that's sickening.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
The sinister thing is like they're not thinking about it.
There's no black people around, and like even still they're
so subjugated in society, it's not like that they care
how they feel about it, so it's like they're just.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Doing their thing.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I mean, just seeing a yearbook like this where truly
no one is of color, it's like, yeah, it's kind
of shocking.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Much of this memory of the Confederacy doesn't develop during
the Civil War. Even the Confederate flag as we know it,
the red flag with the stars and bars, that's a
flag that wasn't as popular whenever it comes to the
memory of the Confederacy until the nineteen sixties, as it
developed in opposition to the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Doctor Brandon Rinder is an assistant professor of history at
the University of Utah, but he was raised in I'm
sure the gorgeous acts and gives it away, Kentucky.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
I grew up in Kentucky, a state that didn't secede
from the Union, but it has more Confederate monuments and
memorials in the state than it does Union monuments and memorials.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
We wanted to talk to Brandon because as a Kentuckian
and as a historian who specializes in black life in
post war America, he could tell us more about what
the mid nineteen fifties was like for black kids in
northern Kentucky.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
For the most part, people resisted desegregation as much as
they could. There were schools that would close down in
order to avoid desegregation. In some cases, they would allow
a very minimal number of black students sent to white
schools to argue that they had desegregated, when really they had.
(18:08):
In most cases, it took roughly ten to fifteen years
for most schools to actually desegregate according to federal standards.
Whenever you consider all of the housing inequality within major cities,
the amount of poverty. In many cases, this forced a
lot of black residents in these cities to areas outside
(18:29):
of the cities. And so if I had to guess,
there are probably a lot of black Southerners that might
have moved north and ended up in Cincinnati, but then
because of the conditions within those cities, had to find
cheaper housing options, had to find more livable conditions just
outside of that city, and so it could be in
places like Covington or in places like Florence.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Black people have been coming to the northern Kentucky region
for a long time. Cincinnati was a key hub in
the nineteenth Underground Railroad because the Ohio River provided a
crucial passage to freedom.
Speaker 7 (19:04):
In the north.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Of course, with black migration comes anti black violence here.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The racial violence started in an open public way started
right after the Civil War, and that was just like
this campaign of terror that started in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
This is Hillary Delaney of Boone County Public Libraries and
a Boone County High School alumna. She helms the Borderlands
Archive and History Center, where her focus is on African
American history. In Boone County, Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Returning Confederate soldiers were terrorizing and feeding people and saying
you've got to get out or we'll kill you.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
That campaign of terror was based at a tavern in
nearby Walton, Kentucky, where the former Confederate soldiers set up shop.
They were responsible for eight lynchings in a ten year
period from eighteen seventy six through eighteen eighty five. Names
of four of their eight victims are part of the
Lynching Memorial at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
in Montgomery, Alabama. Racial violence continued in the area for decades.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
In nineteen seventeen, somehow the corner was on site when
people had chased this man that they thought stole from
someone and they were threatening to lynch him, and he
was in a tree, literally in a tree, trying to
get away from them, and this corner using smart actually
using sort of a sense of humor approach to talk
them down. I'll come on now, boys, you know, like
(20:26):
I don't want to work today, so come on, you know,
huh dark dark dark.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, like a coroner says.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's really glad handing them and all that. But he
saved the guy's life. But that would have been, you know,
just a generation before.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
This was a generation before Boone County High School opened
in nineteen fifty four. In the first class of BHS,
the children of People very Much Alive in nineteen seventeen
named their team after Rebel without a Cause before it
had even been filmed. Unless rebel really meant something else.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
The term rebel. The historical context of the term rebel
is so interesting because during the Civil War and then
immediately after the war, Southerners Confederate sympathizers referred to the
war as the War of Northern Aggression, that it wasn't
the South's fault that the Civil War happened, it was
the North's fault. Northerners referred to it as the War
(21:22):
of Southern rebellion. Rebel actually changes immediately after the Civil
War from a symbol of shame as people who caused
the Civil War to more of a point of pride,
and so we see this in high school mascots. Most notably,
we can see this in the state of Mississippi, where
the University of Mississippi Ole miss their mascot is also
(21:45):
the Rebel. The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens,
gave a cornerstone speech saying that slavery and white supremacy
were the cornerstone of Southern society. But then immediately after
the Civil War he writes a book explaining that his
cornerstone speech wasn't exactly interpreted the way that he meant it.
(22:06):
He says that the Civil War wasn't about slavery or
white supremacy. It was about the idea of states rights exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I want to break out of the interview for just
a moment, because when doctor Rinder brought up the cornerstone speech,
I was intrigued. Here was the VP of the Confederacy
spelling out before the start of the Civil War what
he and the Confederacy saw as the reasoning. And it
is damning the Constitution.
Speaker 7 (22:33):
It is true secured every essential guarantee of the Institution
while it should last, and hence no argument can be
justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured because of
the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were
fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality
(22:56):
of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation,
and the government built upon it fell when the storm
came and the wind blew. Our new government is founded
upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid. It's
cornerstone rests upon the.
Speaker 9 (23:18):
Great truth that the Nigra is not equal to the
white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race is
his natural and normal condition.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I cannot imagine a worse sentiment. And yet it's an
uphill battle to change the team name. Anyway, back to
doctor Brandon render.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Well, a lot of people that want to talk to
me about this as a history professor and say that,
you know, people are racing history by taking these statues
down or by removing Confederate flags, and I'm like, no, Actually,
what this is doing is in many ways recovering the
true history of what's happened to you. And so what's
happened is that over time it's been revised so much.
(24:00):
We've taken all of the negative elements out of something
like the term rebel or something like a Confederate statue.
But really what we're doing is actually giving this more history,
not the history that we're comfortable with, but maybe the
history that makes us a little bit uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
History is uncomfortable. Let's just say it. A lot of
bad things happened in the past. The history of America
is not pretty. It's the history of chattel slavery, and
of native genocide and the internment of Japanese Americans. To
whitewash literally our history is to do it a disservice.
Speaker 10 (24:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I've had, really, honestly, some white people say to me,
and this is not inn this is in Henderson County.
I did a program and this woman said, well, why
do you even do this? First I did not.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
I was of like.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Meaning, you know, yeah today, or like.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
My answer is, you know, I work in local history,
and this is local history. And you know, if we
decided in a rural community that we were only going
to do the history of the people who farmed tobacco
and not the people who grew corn, we just leave
them out, pretend like it didn't exist, and there was
no corn in the first place. And that's really dumbin
it down, but that's exactly what, Yeah, you have to
(25:17):
when we have tours, there's always someone who says, well,
you know, my family had slaves, but they were like
family really, And I say, well, if you owned your
family and they didn't have any autonomy and they couldn't leave, yeah,
then it would like family. But no, I mean I
(25:40):
always say something like that, aren't you glad that we
know better now?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
But do we know better now? I mean, really, if
we were in such denial about that past that we'd
make up a fairy tale about how the team became
the rebels because of James Dean and not blatantly from
Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers who waged a war of terror
across this very region. What have we actually learned? I
think a lot about the first black students at my
(26:07):
high school and what it must have been like to
walk those halls.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I think the first couple of years that Boone County
when it was integrated, of the people that stayed in
the county, the families that stayed in the county, they
stayed very low key. I think, right, just like put
your head down in the Bible.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
We're going to get out of here as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Survival.
Speaker 8 (26:27):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Unlike the story of Ruby Bridges or the Little Rock nine,
the earliest African American teachers and students at Boone County
are quiet whispers and newspapers and yearbooks. It's difficult to
tell how open Boone County was to integrating. A nineteen
fifty five article specifically mentions that the quote reason for
the year's grace on integration of graded schools was to
give the board time to work out a solution for
(26:52):
the employment of Wallace straight Negro teacher. Another article in
the fall of nineteen fifty five mentions, quote, two rose
are reported at the Boone County High School in Florence.
Looking at the nineteen fifty six year book, we can
see a phase or two that pop out from the
crowd Sophomore Alis Sanders, freshman Shirley Frasier, freshman Lawrence Webb.
In the nineteen fifty seven yearbook, it's a couple of
(27:14):
totally different black students in the previous year. Oh and
by the way, the nineteen fifty seven yearbook has a
rearing horse with a Confederate soldier saber in hand on
the cover. You remember that scene in Rebel Without a
Cause where James Dean was on a horse with a saber, right,
But the first black graduate from Boone wasn't until nineteen
fifty nine. He was there for just two years, the
(27:35):
first black teacher who the board apparently needed a year
to figure out what to do with. While as Straighter
was the son of an enslaved man and attended both
Kentucky State College and Wilberforce University. He then taught at
the Burlington Colored School and even served as its principal
until the schools consolidated with the other county schools in
nineteen fifty four. He then became the bchs assistant librarian.
(27:56):
As head librarians come and go over the years, mister
Strader is all the assistant until his retirement in nineteen
sixty six. There's a very nice Black History Month write
up about him in the Boone County High School student newspaper,
still as of twenty twenty four, named the rebellion as
in the War of Southern Rebellion, I want to bring
(28:16):
it back to Shirley Fraser, one of the first students
to integrate Boone County High School. The last name Fraser
is local to this part of northern Kentucky. Joel Fraser
was a slave owner over in Union, just a few
miles south of Florence. One of his slaves, named John Fraser,
was the grandfather of Shirley. She was one of the
first black students at a school built eight miles from
(28:38):
where her grandfather lived in Bondage and seeing a thirty
six percent of all white families owned slaves before the
Civil War in Boone County specifically, Shirley was definitely going
to school with the descendants of slaveholders. Shirley Fraser passed
away in twenty twenty at the age of eighty. Her
grandparents were born slaves, and she died a few years ago.
(29:01):
What I'm getting at here is that this is recent history.
What we call history was someone else's present, and we
are living through history every day, the knowledge of which
has always inspired me to change it more unchanging history.
After the break, the woman.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
Who's sitting down right now in a blue shirt had
a little box of pins.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The little girl in her board just took one of
the pins and they are rainbow heart pins.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Okay, nice, So that's what it must be something. Yeah,
and she's got one on.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
They're giving them out. Yeah, I'll take one o. The
kids are all right.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
Welcome, welcome you writing to this new board meeting of
this scholar. I would like to say that this weird
answered off.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
We decided to attend a school board meeting, not exactly incognito,
but not there to make waves or bring up biscuits
or rebels just yet. We were there to learn about
what's going on at the school and how the decision
making bodies work. But we unexpectedly showed up to a
meeting that planned to address Bill SB one fifty.
Speaker 11 (30:18):
Senate Bill one fifty will become law today in Frankfurt.
Republican lawmakers in both chambers overturned Governor Andy Basheer's veto
of a bill critics c as a bill being against
transgender youth as it bans gender or firm and care
for miners, and set school policies on bathroom use, students
preferred pronouns, and teaching sexual identity.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Once we clude into what was unraveling right in front
of us, we anticipated a lot of ugly and frankly
hateful remarks.
Speaker 10 (30:49):
Is the law, and we have to follow the law,
and that's sometimes hard for the community to understand.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I mean, this place isn't exactly wronghold of progressive thinking,
but what actually went down shocked the hell out of me.
I'd like to speak to you today about SB one fifty.
Speaker 8 (31:06):
I would like to discuss the emotional and physical pain
that being misgendered caused me.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Union.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I'm also here to talk about SB I am here
tonight because I'm a proud Cyo Kentuckian and because I
care deeply about LGBTQ plus students and families in new
kind of schools.
Speaker 8 (31:22):
SB one fifty is unconstitutional and will be struck dow.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
Important come today about SB one fifty. I hope in
your hearts that most of you believe that it's wrong.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Hello, my name is Amber Hoffmann.
Speaker 10 (31:33):
I've actually reached out to you guys personally. Only one
of you responded back to me.
Speaker 12 (31:38):
So instead of taking the time to speak to you,
I'm going to take this.
Speaker 10 (31:40):
Opportunity to speak to the educators and administrators that I
know are listening to this and that are currently scared
of the implementation of SB one fifty in Boone County
school districts. So this is a guide to Kentucky Senate
Bill SB one fifty. SB one fifty does not require
(32:01):
schools to out lgbt Q students.
Speaker 12 (32:05):
It actually prohibits the Kentucky Department of Education from requiring
schools to keep information private from parents. It does not
require the removal of pride flats or safe space tickers.
It says nothing at all related to these items.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
After the meeting, well after the public comments section and
before they started getting into budget details, we stepped outside
and there they.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Were, Hey, just remember what we did a year ago.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Most of the speakers against SB one fifty huddled together
in the warm, dark night hashing out. The next moves
came inture war.
Speaker 11 (32:42):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
They were strategizing on how to transform this not so
welcoming place where I grew up into something better. It
hit me in a way I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Wait are you from mbr NO, But I was on
cricket media.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Oh my god, I know that every day. Yeah, seeing
these folks take on a giant much bigger than themselves,
it lit a spark of hope. It made me think
that maybe my own mission could catch fire in this town.
And it was crystal clear now. If there's any hope
for that, it's through Amber Hoffman.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
I've been doing this work for a while, just like
I don't know that I wouldn't say for fun. Like
I feel like it's like my obligation to participate in
what is going on in my country and what's happening
locally in my community. So I do it a look
like as an obligation, I kind of think, But I
love it.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Amber Hoffman is a district parent and member of the
political nonprofit Northern Kentucky Initiative, which advocates for progressive issues
and provides community support.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
We have decided to take on Moms for Liberty. We
have a chapter of Moms for Liberty that is operating
in Boom County. There's two or three of them that
have really been the face of pushing this kind of
hateful legislation, and they've done a fantastic job of it.
They've gotten behind the representative, Steve Browlings, and he helps
sponsor some of the more heinous bills that they've been
(34:07):
trying to put through, an SB one fifty, for example.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Moms for Liberty isn't just a Kentucky problem, but a
nationwide organization held bent on imposing their views on gender, sex, race,
and history on school boards and state legislatures everywhere. But
they're also a local problem too. School Board member Cindy
Young is the vice president of the Boone County chapter
of the Moms for Liberty, at least she was before
the chapter was dissolved because the chapter president was caught
(34:32):
being racist. Shocking. I know. Trust me when I say
this isn't the last you'll hear about this on the podcast,
but for now, suffice it to say that the Moms
for Liberty are a problem everywhere and also here and
there are a problem Amber Hoffman is working to combat.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
So a couple of years ago, pre COVID, I started
doing this thing where I would have what I was
calling political parties at my house where I would just
invite people that I thought had progressive ideas, and I
would be like cockergate, let's meet basic grassroots, like, let's
take it back to the garage and have these conversations.
Everyone here feels incredibly disconnected, and it is. It has
(35:10):
been a labor of love in this area. And since
I've been doing it now for you know, five or
six years, anytime something like this would come up. We
would just reach out, all of us would reach out
to each other and be like, hey, did you hear
this is happening.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
The actual people that.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Control this place, that have no idea what's going on,
they have no clue how different it is on the ground.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Now, this is the old stomping grounds. They did add sidewalks.
Shout out to Mayor.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It only took my entire life, But I remember, like
I would walk to a friend's house and like there
was never a sidewalk.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You still know, you.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Can actually see they're putting the sidewalk in right there,
right like that gravel is the sidewalk, and there's.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
People walking on the dirt. All of this is different.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Driving up Burlington Pike towards the high school, you pass
a Spanish language church. A mosque is right across the
street from bchs. Amber's right, It is different on the ground. Now,
coming to Florence, revisiting the school I went to, in
the streets that I grew up on, seeing the homecoming
parade and the diversity of the kids that took part.
(36:18):
Whispering at the library as the staff helped every kind
of person, seeing the crowd of people willing to stand
up at the school board and speak truth to power.
I saw just how different it really was. And yet,
even as change moves to town, the shadow of history
still looms over the region because people are too unwilling
(36:38):
or too scared to face it. One of the places
we'll be passing did change their name. It used to
be I think Plantation Point, and you know, they were like, oh, ksnay, yeah, yeah,
I don't know what this place is called up here,
but this used to be a plantation apartment complex. And
like I remember like the black quarterback there.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I was like, you live at the plantation. Yeah, Now
it's weaver Farm as you can see. They're like, it's
a farm. It's not plantation, it's a farm. Some progress,
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Seeing the changes in Florence and meeting people like Hillary
at the library and Amber, I realized that not everyone
is afraid of the past. That there are people who
are willing to look clear out at history and say
the obvious but brave thing that we don't have to
be defined by it, that we can move beyond it
to build better things for everyone. But it means being
honest about it. And so I'll be honest now the
(37:36):
Boone County Rebels namesake does not come from Rebel without
a cause. They were named the Rebels, like hundreds of
other high schools that took on the name Rebel in
the iconography of the Confederacy in the nineteen fifties and
the nineteen sixties as a response to desegregation. A whole
lot of kids and administrators saw the change that was
happening in their world and decided they would rather embrace
(37:58):
the Confederacy than the black kids just trying to go
to school. Truth is hard, history is ugly, but the
future doesn't have to be. We can change, and friends,
We're gonna do it more than ever I know it.
(38:22):
Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth Planet Audio in
association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing by me Aquila Hughes.
I'm also an executive producer and the host. Produced by
Dan Sinker, edited by Josie azam Our. Assistant editor is
Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun, Sound design and
(38:42):
mixing by Josie azam Our. Theme song is all the
Things I Couldn't Say, performed by Bussy and the Bass.
Courtesy of Arts and Crafts Productions, Inc. Our production coordinator
is Kyle Hinton, Our clearance coordinator is Anna Sun Andshine
Production accounting by Dill pret Sing, Additional research support.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
From Janie Dillard.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Cornerstone's speech voice performance by Hal Lublin. Executive producers from
Ninth Planet Audio are Elizabeth Baquet and Jimmy Miller. Special
thanks to Jay Becker and the whole team at BLDG,
the Florence Y'alls, Amber Hoffmann, Hilary Delaney, and Leslie Chambers.
If you have a racist mascot at your high school
or are an alumni of a high school with a
(39:21):
racist mascot and want to share your own experience, please
email us at Rebelspirit podcast at gmail dot com. We
would love to hear from you
My own black collars going.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
On overlanding I.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ninth Planet Audio dot com. We're over landing, You're no work.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And starting my journey to change the BHS mascot. I
figured I should go right to the source and reach
out directly to the school.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
And then you got in touch with the school board.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yes, so okay, So I couldn't wait. I sent the
videmail to the head of the school board and I
can just read it. Yeah, I said, Hello, is Bird.
I'm Akhil Hughes, a writer, comedian, and podcast host who was,
fun fact, the first student representative to the Board of
Education in Kentucky history. I graduated from Buncuta High School
in two thousand and five. I'm writing you because I'm
doing a podcast about schools in the South and Florence's
(00:50):
very cool history. We also want to talk about biscuits.
I'm having trouble finding updated contact information for anyone at
BCHS who can help, and unfortunately Missus Black, the principal
and also my our fine arts teacher, hasn't been able
to assist us. Is there a time that would be
good to visit the play. I even had an end
with the principal Stacy Black who used to be one
of my teachers back in the early odds. So surely
(01:10):
she'd be willing to talk with me and realize that
this is a change the school desperately needed. Right, Maybe
the podcast ends here, and all I have to do
is make her aware of the Raci's mascot and she'll
be a leader and make the change. Listener, I was
so wrong. Long story short, All of my attempts to
connect and speak with someone who actually worked at BCHS
or someone on the school board, literally anyone involved in
(01:32):
education at all, were pushed off to a woman named
Barbara Brady, the Schools and Community Relations coordinator, basically the
PR woman for the school district. And so yeah, Barbara
has uncceed everyone and essentially is just like have you
seen the movie?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I gotta read it? She says, Hello Aquila.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Our school board president, Karen Bird has referred this matter
to me. As far as the name Rebels goes, the
mascot image was removed long ago.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Reader, that was six years ago. Long ago.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
The school is going to be seventy years old, so
you know, relativity. But in any case, long ago, as
you know, the Rebel's nickname remains. The nickname was chosen
by the first graduating class of Boone County High School,
taken from the popular nineteen fifty five movie Rebel Without
a Cause.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's worth watching.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
It's a coming of age movie about emotionally confused middle
class teens. There are more than one hundred high schools
across the country with the nickname Rebels, many of whom
also took the name from the movie at that time.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Half of them are high schools in the North.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
So if you're like Rebel without a Cause like the
James Dean movie, did I hear that right?
Speaker 5 (02:40):
You're telling me up.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
What you You say one thing, he says another, and
everybody changes back again. Akila, didn't you say in the
first episode there was an actual mascot who was unmistakably
a Confederate general in a light blue uniform, feathered cap,
and enormous mustache. Yeah, I sure did, but don't. We're
definitely going to get into why someone would bring up
fifties heart throbs in an email about Civil War mascots,
(03:06):
But the point is that this email was clearly sent
to discourage further action and to get me to essentially
kick rocks. Not only was this message not gonna discourage us,
we were already on our way to Florence. We knew
that we needed to have our feet on the ground
to build a coalition of allies and show Miss Brady,
along with BCHS and the school board, that I'm not
going anywhere. So, fueled by an unrelenting determination and desire
(03:30):
to eat Skyline Chile, I arrived in Florence in September
of twenty twenty three to truly start building this movement.
And it just so happened to be homecoming week at BCHS,
the perfect time for an alumni to come home.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I can't believe I grew up here.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I've been saying that since I got here. Is like,
you know, it's just it's it's very small European wax center. Wow,
that's a big deal for me.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
That would have been a real game changer in high school.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, you're gonna make it right up here. And then
we're coming up on the high school. So it's gonna
be on a right it's rebel way now, yikes. So
this this street, the other street is still Shawan Alexander,
I think.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
But you have Rebel Drive. Wow, big signs main entrance
to the high school. Ooh, what is this? This is
the performing arts center? What we did not have this?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
This the school must be so different inside. They gotta listen.
Shawn Alexander way for non football people. Shawn Alexander was
a legendary NFL player for the Seattle Seahawks who graduated
from Boone in the nineties. He's also a black man
who played for a team in the South called the Rebels.
His name being on one street of the school and
Rebel Drive being the name of the other street is
(04:46):
kind of the whole problem. In a nutshell. You see
kids in that window.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
I think that might be the band room. Yeah, something
like that. All of this was a parking lot. This
is wild. There's money here now.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I know that Seawan Alexander had like a big hand
in the athletic center because he got them like sponsored
by Nike for a season like stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But this is honestly shocking.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
We've come to the history portion of the small town
high school. So buckle up, because in a story where
everyone is pointing to timeline, receipts and attention, details matter.
In nineteen fifty four, they decided to consolidate Burlington, Florence,
New Haven, and Hebern High schools into one new building,
Boone County High School, which is why it's named after
(05:31):
the county rather than the town. The building was erected
in nineteen fifty four on what was then the edge
of Florence. Boone County had a total of five hundred
and fifteen students enrolled in the school that year, along
with eighteen teachers and Principal Chester Goodridge. The story goes
like this. The students were allowed to vote on a mascot.
After several options were shot down, such as the Boone
(05:53):
County Bison or the Boone County Moonshiners, Principal Goodridge was
fed up and called the students rebels. The movie Rebel
without a Call was all the rage, and who wouldn't
want to be James Dean smoking in that leather jacket,
you know, the epitome of cool in nineteen fifty five.
It would be like if they were being formed today,
they'd be the Boone County Wednesdays or the Boone County Barbies.
(06:13):
Honestly legit, But I digress. The story we've been told
ends with the students choosing rebels as their mascot. Today,
Boone County has more than thirteen hundred students enrolled, and
it also turns seventy years old in twenty twenty four.
And while we were in town, we knew that we'd
need to deep dive into this possibly probably apocryphal story.
(06:36):
I was a lady rebel, like, when does that even need?
Speaker 6 (06:39):
If Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
With the image of us right here in black and white.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
And friends figures a flag or mascot.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Any time you're trying to mess with tradition, you get
to be ready for a serious backlash.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes, and this is Rebel Spirit,
Episode two, History Lessons. So we are at the Burlington Library.
It's the in Boone County. It's the main library for
the area. We just got a really detailed tour of
all of the local history info. So now we're just
(07:21):
digging through archives of yearbooks and newspapers and.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
They have a lot, they have a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
We've got twenty pounds in years nineteen fifty one, the
other yeah, fifty three, I feel twenty three.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
And fifty four would be very helpful. All right, So
this is fifteen oh a black man.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
The only one of them.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Is he black.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Also, though, I'm curious if we can find anything about
Rebel Without a Cause when it was first like.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
In a newspaper anywhere around.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
I doubt that there was an advertisement that they all saw.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I'm like, we're obsessed with it.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Him back to the first yearbook nineteen fifty five, and
I'm just going to read everything and look at all
of the little handwritten notes.
Speaker 7 (08:14):
There's got to.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Be something somewhere.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
There's nothing that would even slightly allude to the fact
that they love Reout a Cause. Somebody had to have
written the story of this if it happened right like,
it just seems weird that like no one knows that
is stunning. It doesn't even mention it.
Speaker 8 (08:35):
Rebel Lovicause is this pretty seminal film. When it came
out in nineteen fifty five. It was released soon after
James Dean's tragic death. I think he was not even
twenty five, and he died in a tragic automobile accident
on a California freeway. And in the movie they are
drag racing and doing what teenagers do reckless things.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
This is doctor Emily Carmen, an associate professor of Film
and Media Studies at Chapman University. Her primary research focuses
on classic Hollywood cinema.
Speaker 8 (09:06):
It really was this statement at the time, especially with
the director Nicholas Ray critiquing American conformity culture, conspicuous consumption.
This is the great economic boom of the fifties after
the scarcity of the Depression and the war years.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And this is a huge hit film, right, like it
takes over the country. How do you then quantify its
national effects?
Speaker 8 (09:29):
Even if it wasn't digital like it is now where
you can get shock waves around the world, there was
still a big pumblicity campaign. So when a film, I
mean and when James Dean died, that's still national new internetion, right,
so there would still be a huge awareness unless the
town really had limited access to national publications. But I
(09:51):
still feel like James Dean dying would get from page
news in a local paper.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Okay, So from what we can salute, presuming people in
Florence had access to the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. The
October twenty fifth, nineteen fifty five issue says that it
is opening Wednesday at the RKO Palace in Cincinnati. That
was opening weekend across the country.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
And there is a.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Big picture of James Dean included with the description, so
we can agree the movie was a big deal. But
it wasn't until months later January twenty ninth and thirtieth,
nineteen fifty six that Rebel Without a Cause came to Florence,
where it played the Florence Drive In. Yes, the Drive
in in January. That previous fall, they announced the introduction
(10:34):
of electric InCAR heaters, so that and I quote, patrons
may now enjoy living room comfort even in sub zero
weather for those that weren't interested in freezing their cars.
Rebel without a Cause also played that week indoors at
the Gaiety Theater in nearby Erlinger, Okay. So between the
two theaters, Rebel without a Cause played in the area
for a total of three days in late January. Both
(10:56):
screened on Sunday and Monday, the twenty ninth and thirtieth
the Gaiety he also had it on the thirty first.
That's it if you miss seeing it. The VCR wouldn't
be in living rooms for another thirty years.
Speaker 8 (11:07):
I teach a class on nineteen fifties, cinema culture. And
I remember taking classes in literature and colleg nineteen fifties
when I was a student, and I think that the
fifties was a really tumultuous decade, even though it's remembered
as this, you know, Dell, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, exactly. Here's just some other important dates while we're
in the fifties. The decision on Brown versus Board of
Education was issued on May seventeenth, nineteen fifty four. On
May thirty first, nineteen fifty five, the Supreme Court dropped
the sequel Brown two, demanding the implementation of desegregation with
all deliberate speed, because as always, we need to remind
folks about equality. September fourth, nineteen fifty seven was the
(11:48):
day the Little Rock nine, nine black students attempted to
enroll at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to send federal troops to
make sure these little kids could attend school without facing
violence from racist adults. One last one, September twelfth, nineteen
fifty eight, the Supreme Court ruled on Cooper versus Aaron,
(12:08):
which prohibited state laws from undermining the Supreme Court's authority.
All right, So the nineteen fifties was a lot more
than soda shops and leather jackets, and we're gonna get
into that in a lot more detail in a minute.
But let's get back to Rebel Without a Cause, because
here we are talking to one of the leading authorities
of classic cinema. Surely she's heard of a high school
sports team naming themselves after this seminal film, right.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
No, I've not. So that was intriguing when I got
your your email request. It's like, I've never heard that. Yeah,
I mean, if you want to be I think it's
cool to be the rebels from Rebel That a Cause.
But the mascot needs to be like a cool red
jacket and blue je.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Back hair, white tea has a car like that.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
Absolutely, the imagery just does not add up to that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Okay, So, doctor Carmen may have never heard of a
high school tea naming themselves after Rebel Without a Cause,
But that's the story we've been told over and over
and over again. It's that these kids just loved Jimmy
Dean so much that they named the team after him.
And it's not only the boone County Rebels. Remember, according
to an email that we got from Barbara Brady, which
I will read again because I'm petty, there are more
(13:18):
than one hundred high schools across the country with the
name Rebels, many of whom also took the name from
the movie at the time. This isn't just a story,
it is the official line of the Boone County School District.
So certainly this has to match up to the relevant facts, right,
So this issue is October seventh, nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Is that Thursday?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
And they have an article basic local News amount of
plant food and fertilizers.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Importance is the county agent.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Boone County High School. The athletic teams were dubbed the
Rebels by the student body in a recent school wide
vote conducted by the journalism class. The Rebel football team
made its first home appearance on the new Boone County
High School field Thursday night, September thirtieth. Twelve girls led
the Rebel cheering section. It's right here in black and
white in print in nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
So they Lion, They Lion.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
The first year of Boone County High School is from
September seventh, nineteen fifty four to the first graduation on
May twentieth, nineteen fifty five. Friends, they were still filming
Rebel without a Cause when that graduation took place. They
were called the Rebels a year before the movie was released.
So no, they are not named after Rebel without a Cause.
Representatives for the education system in Boone County, Kentucky are
(14:42):
simply lying. It's also just funny that, like, all it
took was coming to the library and we figured.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
It out in like five minutes.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
There's no interrogating what people are told here. It's as
you were told and they pass it down and that's
good enough. When we return, we're going to go from
brown versus board to brown versus everybody the nineteen sixties,
we'll be right back. This is sixty four. Whoa loo,
(15:15):
I feel like this is like, you know, as the
school's integrating, allegedly, we'll start to see the pushback. Yeah,
JFK visited Boone County during his campaign. Why did JFK
come here?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Sixty nine yearbook?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
There's no mention of JFK dying. Okay, so it's not
explicitly racist yet.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
No, there we are.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Yeah, there's the big Confederate flag at the football game
nineteen sixty eight, and no one's acting like it's a
big deal. But it's like a sea of young white
kids in the sixties. They're like all standing at this
gate watching the football game. But flung over the gate
that they're like standing at is a huge Confederate flag.
It spans like eight kids, and there's a kid that's
(16:05):
probably five standing right there with it, touching it. So
it seems like it's definitely just it doesn't seem like
it's not normal at all, Like there's no nothing's pointing
it out. Mister Jerry Johnson serves as judge for the
mock trial, so it's a mock trial and they've got
a Confederate flag and judges and the judge has it
on his hat too.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, that's sickening.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
The sinister thing is like they're not thinking about it.
There's no black people around, and like even still they're
so subjugated in society, it's not like that they care
how they feel about it, so it's like they're just.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Doing their thing.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
I mean, just seeing a yearbook like this where truly
no one is of color, it's like, yeah, it's kind
of shocking.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Much of this memory of the Confederacy doesn't develop during
the Civil War. Even the Confederate flag as we know it,
the red flag with the stars and bars, that's a
flag that wasn't as popular whenever it comes to the
memory of the Confederacy until the nineteen sixties, as it
developed in opposition to the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Doctor Brandon Rinder is an assistant professor of history at
the University of Utah, but he was raised in I'm
sure the gorgeous acts and gives it away, Kentucky.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
I grew up in Kentucky, a state that didn't secede
from the Union, but it has more Confederate monuments and
memorials in the state than it does Union monuments and memorials.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
We wanted to talk to Brandon because as a Kentuckian
and as a historian who specializes in black life in
post war America, he could tell us more about what
the mid nineteen fifties was like for black kids in
northern Kentucky.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
For the most part, people resisted desegregation as much as
they could. There were schools that would close down in
order to avoid desegregation. In some cases, they would allow
a very minimal number of black students sent to white
schools to argue that they had desegregated, when really they had.
(18:08):
In most cases, it took roughly ten to fifteen years
for most schools to actually desegregate according to federal standards.
Whenever you consider all of the housing inequality within major cities,
the amount of poverty. In many cases, this forced a
lot of black residents in these cities to areas outside
(18:29):
of the cities. And so if I had to guess,
there are probably a lot of black Southerners that might
have moved north and ended up in Cincinnati, but then
because of the conditions within those cities, had to find
cheaper housing options, had to find more livable conditions just
outside of that city, and so it could be in
places like Covington or in places like Florence.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Black people have been coming to the northern Kentucky region
for a long time. Cincinnati was a key hub in
the nineteenth Underground Railroad because the Ohio River provided a
crucial passage to freedom.
Speaker 7 (19:04):
In the north.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Of course, with black migration comes anti black violence here.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
The racial violence started in an open public way started
right after the Civil War, and that was just like
this campaign of terror that started in eighteen sixty six.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
This is Hillary Delaney of Boone County Public Libraries and
a Boone County High School alumna. She helms the Borderlands
Archive and History Center, where her focus is on African
American history. In Boone County, Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Returning Confederate soldiers were terrorizing and feeding people and saying
you've got to get out or we'll kill you.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
That campaign of terror was based at a tavern in
nearby Walton, Kentucky, where the former Confederate soldiers set up shop.
They were responsible for eight lynchings in a ten year
period from eighteen seventy six through eighteen eighty five. Names
of four of their eight victims are part of the
Lynching Memorial at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice
in Montgomery, Alabama. Racial violence continued in the area for decades.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
In nineteen seventeen, somehow the corner was on site when
people had chased this man that they thought stole from
someone and they were threatening to lynch him, and he
was in a tree, literally in a tree, trying to
get away from them, and this corner using smart actually
using sort of a sense of humor approach to talk
them down. I'll come on now, boys, you know, like
(20:26):
I don't want to work today, so come on, you know,
huh dark dark dark.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, like a coroner says.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's really glad handing them and all that. But he
saved the guy's life. But that would have been, you know,
just a generation before.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
This was a generation before Boone County High School opened
in nineteen fifty four. In the first class of BHS,
the children of People very Much Alive in nineteen seventeen
named their team after Rebel without a Cause before it
had even been filmed. Unless rebel really meant something else.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
The term rebel. The historical context of the term rebel
is so interesting because during the Civil War and then
immediately after the war, Southerners Confederate sympathizers referred to the
war as the War of Northern Aggression, that it wasn't
the South's fault that the Civil War happened, it was
the North's fault. Northerners referred to it as the War
(21:22):
of Southern rebellion. Rebel actually changes immediately after the Civil
War from a symbol of shame as people who caused
the Civil War to more of a point of pride,
and so we see this in high school mascots. Most notably,
we can see this in the state of Mississippi, where
the University of Mississippi Ole miss their mascot is also
(21:45):
the Rebel. The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens,
gave a cornerstone speech saying that slavery and white supremacy
were the cornerstone of Southern society. But then immediately after
the Civil War he writes a book explaining that his
cornerstone speech wasn't exactly interpreted the way that he meant it.
(22:06):
He says that the Civil War wasn't about slavery or
white supremacy. It was about the idea of states rights exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
I want to break out of the interview for just
a moment, because when doctor Rinder brought up the cornerstone speech,
I was intrigued. Here was the VP of the Confederacy
spelling out before the start of the Civil War what
he and the Confederacy saw as the reasoning. And it
is damning the Constitution.
Speaker 7 (22:33):
It is true secured every essential guarantee of the Institution
while it should last, and hence no argument can be
justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured because of
the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were
fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality
(22:56):
of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation,
and the government built upon it fell when the storm
came and the wind blew. Our new government is founded
upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid. It's
cornerstone rests upon the.
Speaker 9 (23:18):
Great truth that the Nigra is not equal to the
white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race is
his natural and normal condition.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I cannot imagine a worse sentiment. And yet it's an
uphill battle to change the team name. Anyway, back to
doctor Brandon render.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Well, a lot of people that want to talk to
me about this as a history professor and say that,
you know, people are racing history by taking these statues
down or by removing Confederate flags, and I'm like, no, Actually,
what this is doing is in many ways recovering the
true history of what's happened to you. And so what's
happened is that over time it's been revised so much.
(24:00):
We've taken all of the negative elements out of something
like the term rebel or something like a Confederate statue.
But really what we're doing is actually giving this more history,
not the history that we're comfortable with, but maybe the
history that makes us a little bit uncomfortable.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
History is uncomfortable. Let's just say it. A lot of
bad things happened in the past. The history of America
is not pretty. It's the history of chattel slavery, and
of native genocide and the internment of Japanese Americans. To
whitewash literally our history is to do it a disservice.
Speaker 10 (24:34):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I've had, really, honestly, some white people say to me,
and this is not inn this is in Henderson County.
I did a program and this woman said, well, why
do you even do this? First I did not.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
I was of like.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Meaning, you know, yeah today, or like.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
My answer is, you know, I work in local history,
and this is local history. And you know, if we
decided in a rural community that we were only going
to do the history of the people who farmed tobacco
and not the people who grew corn, we just leave
them out, pretend like it didn't exist, and there was
no corn in the first place. And that's really dumbin
it down, but that's exactly what, Yeah, you have to
(25:17):
when we have tours, there's always someone who says, well,
you know, my family had slaves, but they were like
family really, And I say, well, if you owned your
family and they didn't have any autonomy and they couldn't leave, yeah,
then it would like family. But no, I mean I
(25:40):
always say something like that, aren't you glad that we
know better now?
Speaker 3 (25:45):
But do we know better now? I mean, really, if
we were in such denial about that past that we'd
make up a fairy tale about how the team became
the rebels because of James Dean and not blatantly from
Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers who waged a war of terror
across this very region. What have we actually learned? I
think a lot about the first black students at my
(26:07):
high school and what it must have been like to
walk those halls.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
I think the first couple of years that Boone County
when it was integrated, of the people that stayed in
the county, the families that stayed in the county, they
stayed very low key. I think, right, just like put
your head down in the Bible.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
We're going to get out of here as soon as possible.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
Survival.
Speaker 8 (26:27):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Unlike the story of Ruby Bridges or the Little Rock nine,
the earliest African American teachers and students at Boone County
are quiet whispers and newspapers and yearbooks. It's difficult to
tell how open Boone County was to integrating. A nineteen
fifty five article specifically mentions that the quote reason for
the year's grace on integration of graded schools was to
give the board time to work out a solution for
(26:52):
the employment of Wallace straight Negro teacher. Another article in
the fall of nineteen fifty five mentions, quote, two rose
are reported at the Boone County High School in Florence.
Looking at the nineteen fifty six year book, we can
see a phase or two that pop out from the
crowd Sophomore Alis Sanders, freshman Shirley Frasier, freshman Lawrence Webb.
In the nineteen fifty seven yearbook, it's a couple of
(27:14):
totally different black students in the previous year. Oh and
by the way, the nineteen fifty seven yearbook has a
rearing horse with a Confederate soldier saber in hand on
the cover. You remember that scene in Rebel Without a
Cause where James Dean was on a horse with a saber, right,
But the first black graduate from Boone wasn't until nineteen
fifty nine. He was there for just two years, the
(27:35):
first black teacher who the board apparently needed a year
to figure out what to do with. While as Straighter
was the son of an enslaved man and attended both
Kentucky State College and Wilberforce University. He then taught at
the Burlington Colored School and even served as its principal
until the schools consolidated with the other county schools in
nineteen fifty four. He then became the bchs assistant librarian.
(27:56):
As head librarians come and go over the years, mister
Strader is all the assistant until his retirement in nineteen
sixty six. There's a very nice Black History Month write
up about him in the Boone County High School student newspaper,
still as of twenty twenty four, named the rebellion as
in the War of Southern Rebellion, I want to bring
(28:16):
it back to Shirley Fraser, one of the first students
to integrate Boone County High School. The last name Fraser
is local to this part of northern Kentucky. Joel Fraser
was a slave owner over in Union, just a few
miles south of Florence. One of his slaves, named John Fraser,
was the grandfather of Shirley. She was one of the
first black students at a school built eight miles from
(28:38):
where her grandfather lived in Bondage and seeing a thirty
six percent of all white families owned slaves before the
Civil War in Boone County specifically, Shirley was definitely going
to school with the descendants of slaveholders. Shirley Fraser passed
away in twenty twenty at the age of eighty. Her
grandparents were born slaves, and she died a few years ago.
(29:01):
What I'm getting at here is that this is recent history.
What we call history was someone else's present, and we
are living through history every day, the knowledge of which
has always inspired me to change it more unchanging history.
After the break, the woman.
Speaker 5 (29:25):
Who's sitting down right now in a blue shirt had
a little box of pins.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The little girl in her board just took one of
the pins and they are rainbow heart pins.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Okay, nice, So that's what it must be something. Yeah,
and she's got one on.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
They're giving them out. Yeah, I'll take one o. The
kids are all right.
Speaker 10 (29:51):
Welcome, welcome you writing to this new board meeting of
this scholar. I would like to say that this weird
answered off.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
We decided to attend a school board meeting, not exactly incognito,
but not there to make waves or bring up biscuits
or rebels just yet. We were there to learn about
what's going on at the school and how the decision
making bodies work. But we unexpectedly showed up to a
meeting that planned to address Bill SB one fifty.
Speaker 11 (30:18):
Senate Bill one fifty will become law today in Frankfurt.
Republican lawmakers in both chambers overturned Governor Andy Basheer's veto
of a bill critics c as a bill being against
transgender youth as it bans gender or firm and care
for miners, and set school policies on bathroom use, students
preferred pronouns, and teaching sexual identity.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Once we clude into what was unraveling right in front
of us, we anticipated a lot of ugly and frankly
hateful remarks.
Speaker 10 (30:49):
Is the law, and we have to follow the law,
and that's sometimes hard for the community to understand.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
I mean, this place isn't exactly wronghold of progressive thinking,
but what actually went down shocked the hell out of me.
I'd like to speak to you today about SB one fifty.
Speaker 8 (31:06):
I would like to discuss the emotional and physical pain
that being misgendered caused me.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Union.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
I'm also here to talk about SB I am here
tonight because I'm a proud Cyo Kentuckian and because I
care deeply about LGBTQ plus students and families in new
kind of schools.
Speaker 8 (31:22):
SB one fifty is unconstitutional and will be struck dow.
Speaker 10 (31:25):
Important come today about SB one fifty. I hope in
your hearts that most of you believe that it's wrong.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Hello, my name is Amber Hoffmann.
Speaker 10 (31:33):
I've actually reached out to you guys personally. Only one
of you responded back to me.
Speaker 12 (31:38):
So instead of taking the time to speak to you,
I'm going to take this.
Speaker 10 (31:40):
Opportunity to speak to the educators and administrators that I
know are listening to this and that are currently scared
of the implementation of SB one fifty in Boone County
school districts. So this is a guide to Kentucky Senate
Bill SB one fifty. SB one fifty does not require
(32:01):
schools to out lgbt Q students.
Speaker 12 (32:05):
It actually prohibits the Kentucky Department of Education from requiring
schools to keep information private from parents. It does not
require the removal of pride flats or safe space tickers.
It says nothing at all related to these items.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
After the meeting, well after the public comments section and
before they started getting into budget details, we stepped outside
and there they.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Were, Hey, just remember what we did a year ago.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Most of the speakers against SB one fifty huddled together
in the warm, dark night hashing out. The next moves
came inture war.
Speaker 11 (32:42):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
They were strategizing on how to transform this not so
welcoming place where I grew up into something better. It
hit me in a way I wasn't expecting.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Wait are you from mbr NO, But I was on
cricket media.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
Oh my god, I know that every day. Yeah, seeing
these folks take on a giant much bigger than themselves,
it lit a spark of hope. It made me think
that maybe my own mission could catch fire in this town.
And it was crystal clear now. If there's any hope
for that, it's through Amber Hoffman.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
I've been doing this work for a while, just like
I don't know that I wouldn't say for fun. Like
I feel like it's like my obligation to participate in
what is going on in my country and what's happening
locally in my community. So I do it a look
like as an obligation, I kind of think, But I
love it.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
Amber Hoffman is a district parent and member of the
political nonprofit Northern Kentucky Initiative, which advocates for progressive issues
and provides community support.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
We have decided to take on Moms for Liberty. We
have a chapter of Moms for Liberty that is operating
in Boom County. There's two or three of them that
have really been the face of pushing this kind of
hateful legislation, and they've done a fantastic job of it.
They've gotten behind the representative, Steve Browlings, and he helps
sponsor some of the more heinous bills that they've been
(34:07):
trying to put through, an SB one fifty, for example.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Moms for Liberty isn't just a Kentucky problem, but a
nationwide organization held bent on imposing their views on gender, sex, race,
and history on school boards and state legislatures everywhere. But
they're also a local problem too. School Board member Cindy
Young is the vice president of the Boone County chapter
of the Moms for Liberty, at least she was before
the chapter was dissolved because the chapter president was caught
(34:32):
being racist. Shocking. I know. Trust me when I say
this isn't the last you'll hear about this on the podcast,
but for now, suffice it to say that the Moms
for Liberty are a problem everywhere and also here and
there are a problem Amber Hoffman is working to combat.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
So a couple of years ago, pre COVID, I started
doing this thing where I would have what I was
calling political parties at my house where I would just
invite people that I thought had progressive ideas, and I
would be like cockergate, let's meet basic grassroots, like, let's
take it back to the garage and have these conversations.
Everyone here feels incredibly disconnected, and it is. It has
(35:10):
been a labor of love in this area. And since
I've been doing it now for you know, five or
six years, anytime something like this would come up. We
would just reach out, all of us would reach out
to each other and be like, hey, did you hear
this is happening.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
The actual people that.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Control this place, that have no idea what's going on,
they have no clue how different it is on the ground.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Now, this is the old stomping grounds. They did add sidewalks.
Shout out to Mayor.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
It only took my entire life, But I remember, like
I would walk to a friend's house and like there
was never a sidewalk.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
You still know, you.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Can actually see they're putting the sidewalk in right there,
right like that gravel is the sidewalk, and there's.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
People walking on the dirt. All of this is different.
Speaker 3 (35:58):
Driving up Burlington Pike towards the high school, you pass
a Spanish language church. A mosque is right across the
street from bchs. Amber's right, It is different on the ground. Now,
coming to Florence, revisiting the school I went to, in
the streets that I grew up on, seeing the homecoming
parade and the diversity of the kids that took part.
(36:18):
Whispering at the library as the staff helped every kind
of person, seeing the crowd of people willing to stand
up at the school board and speak truth to power.
I saw just how different it really was. And yet,
even as change moves to town, the shadow of history
still looms over the region because people are too unwilling
(36:38):
or too scared to face it. One of the places
we'll be passing did change their name. It used to
be I think Plantation Point, and you know, they were like, oh, ksnay, yeah, yeah,
I don't know what this place is called up here,
but this used to be a plantation apartment complex. And
like I remember like the black quarterback there.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
I was like, you live at the plantation. Yeah, Now
it's weaver Farm as you can see. They're like, it's
a farm. It's not plantation, it's a farm. Some progress,
I suppose.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Seeing the changes in Florence and meeting people like Hillary
at the library and Amber, I realized that not everyone
is afraid of the past. That there are people who
are willing to look clear out at history and say
the obvious but brave thing that we don't have to
be defined by it, that we can move beyond it
to build better things for everyone. But it means being
honest about it. And so I'll be honest now the
(37:36):
Boone County Rebels namesake does not come from Rebel without
a cause. They were named the Rebels, like hundreds of
other high schools that took on the name Rebel in
the iconography of the Confederacy in the nineteen fifties and
the nineteen sixties as a response to desegregation. A whole
lot of kids and administrators saw the change that was
happening in their world and decided they would rather embrace
(37:58):
the Confederacy than the black kids just trying to go
to school. Truth is hard, history is ugly, but the
future doesn't have to be. We can change, and friends,
We're gonna do it more than ever I know it.
(38:22):
Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth Planet Audio in
association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing by me Aquila Hughes.
I'm also an executive producer and the host. Produced by
Dan Sinker, edited by Josie azam Our. Assistant editor is
Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun, Sound design and
(38:42):
mixing by Josie azam Our. Theme song is all the
Things I Couldn't Say, performed by Bussy and the Bass.
Courtesy of Arts and Crafts Productions, Inc. Our production coordinator
is Kyle Hinton, Our clearance coordinator is Anna Sun Andshine
Production accounting by Dill pret Sing, Additional research support.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
From Janie Dillard.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Cornerstone's speech voice performance by Hal Lublin. Executive producers from
Ninth Planet Audio are Elizabeth Baquet and Jimmy Miller. Special
thanks to Jay Becker and the whole team at BLDG,
the Florence Y'alls, Amber Hoffmann, Hilary Delaney, and Leslie Chambers.
If you have a racist mascot at your high school
or are an alumni of a high school with a
(39:21):
racist mascot and want to share your own experience, please
email us at Rebelspirit podcast at gmail dot com. We
would love to hear from you
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