October 8, 2024 • 34 mins
By now we’ve learned that changing the Rebels mascot and team name is a difficult process. For guidance and inspiration, Akilah turns to other former Rebels who didn’t take no for an answer and pushed for their schools to make a change.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My overlanding rentro No, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I know.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ninth Planet Audio cap com We're over landing, You're over landing.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Over Change happens to people in lots of different ways.
For Annie Wilson in two thousand and two, as an
eighth grader attending the Kullowe Valley School in North Carolina,
it happened with a mascot.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I remember going on a school field trip to the
university library and they had a display at the library
about indigenous symbols used as mascots, like the chiefs and
the redskins and the braves, all of that. So that,
I think is really where my interest in this started.
And then I started cheering and noticing other mascots in
(00:49):
our region that were cool, like the eagles and the mustang.
Why is a gross old man.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
As our mascot?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You already know what I'm going to say, right, big
white mustache, big hat, gray coat. Yes, the Kullowe Valley School,
where Annie Wilson was in middle school, were the rebels.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I remember complaining to my parents about that and then
them helping me kind of connect those dots with you know,
those kind of indigenous mascot symbols. And the Revel. And
so I was the president of the student council, and
I decided, this is something that I want to do.
I want to change this my mascot.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Annie wrote a letter to her local newspaper, the Silva
Harald and Rural.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Lite, to the editor, I recently visited an exhibit at
the Western Carolina University Library at.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
Any use of Native American names, symbols and imagery and
sports teams mascots. This was a very interesting and thought
provoking experience for me. I never realized these seemingly innocent
and even positive icons on a deeper level can be
very degrading and damaging to the culture on which they're taken.
Then I started think about my own school's mascot, the Rebels.
(02:01):
I have attended Colwee Valley School my whole life. I
am now in the eighth grade, president of student council,
and a cheerleader. I have therefore been closely associated with
our mascot. I've worn the image on my clothes, drawing
it on my notebooks, and so forth. But I've now
started to wonder if it is really an appropriate symbol
for our school. In the year two thousand and two
and beyond. People say it represents our heritage and we
(02:24):
should honor it and respect it. I am a Native
Southerner myself, as both of my parents are and all
of their parents, and I do love much about the
Southern culture, its openness and friendliness, its appreciation for the outdoors.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And naturally Any lays it all out the history of
racism in America, from slavery to Jim Crow, and how
it still reverberates today at her school.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Although many of my friends are not racists and mean
no harm by their support of the mascot, I have
discovered that the rebel is deeply troubling and offensive to
all our African American students and their families, and this
grew includes my very closest friends. It is time for
us to shed this unfortunate image of the past and
to select a new mascot with positive imagery and associations.
(03:10):
The plan to initiate this project is within the student
council at CBS, but we will need the support of
the community in order to be successful in achieving this
positive change. Annie mccorn, eighth grader, Kloe Valley School.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Annie's letter ran and the reaction was immediate.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
The first response was a response to support, which was
really exciting. But then then negative, negative pushback started coming out,
and so other strongly worded letters in the newspaper, parents
having strong opinions that they then you give to their children,
and their children coming to school and fighting with me
(03:49):
about why are you doing this? So I remember, you know,
heated debates with classmates but also administrators in the school system.
And then and then I have a very visceral, vivid
memory of receiving a phone call to our house phone
one day that dates me pretty hard, and it was
(04:12):
for me, and I remember taking the call in my parents'
bedroom for some reason, and it was an older man
who told me that he had a shotgun and he
knew where I lived and that I better stop.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And that was scary.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
That was really.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Scary, scary enough that Annie left. She enrolled in a
boarding school in Pennsylvania and later went to college in Washington.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
D C.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It wasn't until she had a child that she thought
about returning back home to Kullowe, where she now teaches
at Western Carolina University, and that child they went to
Collowee Valley School, still home of the rebels, that is
until twenty twenty the murder of George Floyd and a
conversation that began, of course on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
So those conversations are happening about like what do we do,
what can we do in our community? And somebody brought
up why is the rebel still the mascot at Kelly Valley?
And you'd take up this story from years before and
reached out to me.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Eighteen years after she wrote the letter that led to
her leaving town. Annie Wilson was the face of changing
the rebel mascot again, but this time she wasn't a child,
and she wasn't alone.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
We get several hundred people that are supporting this change
and trying to figure out, like, Okay, what do we do?
And there's so much organization and support, which was really cool.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
They did outreach, they started a GoFundMe, they met with
the principal, everything pointed in one direction, the school board.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Then we started communicating with the school board so that
we could get on the schedule for the school board.
And so I would say from the time that we
created the Facebook group to the time that we were
able to present to the school board, it was probably
about eight months.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Annie may have waited eighteen years, but she finally had
her moment to make the case.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Ultimately, it goes in front of the school board and
we just kind of forced a vote after making our
presentation and our pleas. There was a couple of school
board meetings where they were getting input from the community
and things like that, and then ultimately when it was voted,
it was a unanimous vote to replace them.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
That's right, listener, The Kloe Valley Rebels are now as
of June second, twenty twenty one, the Klowe Valley Wolves.
It really can happen.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was a lady rebel, like, what does that even need?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
The Boone County Rebels will stay, the Boone County Rebels
with the image.
Speaker 7 (06:34):
Of right here in black and white, the.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Friends bigger than a flag or mask on.
Speaker 7 (06:39):
Anytime you're trying to mess with tradition, you get to
be ready for a serious backlash.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
From Ninth Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes and this is
Rebel Spiral, Episode six. Other Rebels. There was a point
where I thought Boone County High School was unique in
their rebel name. I actually couldn't have been more wrong.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
There's South great Nick High School. South greatnick Long Island
nineteen eighty four. They had a Confederate flag on the
side of their football helmet.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
So if you want to know all there is to
know about schools that have used the rebels name, there
is no better person to talk to than doctor Caleb Smith.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Briarfield Academy in Lake Providence, Louisiana is a good example
of that. Humphreys Academy in Belzoni, Mississippi, is another one
like that. Oh gosh, I just went blank. There's several
Hickory Flat in Mississippi, George County, Mississippi, Harrison City.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There are so many rebel schools that it's hard to
keep straight. Doctor Smith should know. He wrote his dissertation
on the rebel name in high schools. It's title The
Rebel Made Me Do It, Mascot's Race and the Lost
Cause get him started, and he doesn't stop.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
There's a school in Texas called Evadelle, and Evadelle is
probably the most egregious of the rebel schools that I know.
Their school emblem is the Confederate battle flag. It got
so bad that Google actually pulled their school website for
being a hate speech site because of that image of
(08:15):
the Confederate battle flag. Highland High School in Hardy, Arkansas
is one that comes to mind that they had on
one side of the sign was an American flag and
on the other side was a Confederate flag. There was
an instance and I love this story in Kirkland, Washington.
Janita High School was built in the early seventies and
(08:35):
they decided they were going to do an experimental type
of educational system with really short periods of classes in
really a varied from the norm. So from that they
decided to call themselves the Rebels. And they even adopted
like an eagle as their image even though they were
called the rebels, so it really rebels against everything. But
(08:58):
by nineteen eighty five there's a Confederate flag on the
front of their yearbook.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, it seems like all roads for revel lead to
Confederate crap. Before we get to the Confederate crap, how
about a quick trip through mascot history with Doctor Smith.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Colleges had the first real mascots that we can really identify.
You can go all the way back to Harvard having
Theirs and Yelle having Theirs as the earliest. But schools
developed mascots for lots of different reasons. Sometimes it was
just a type in the newspaper, or some editor said, well,
this team, they were really mean looking and they looked
(09:36):
like a crimson tide because of the way they attacked
the field. And so that's where we get a lot
of our mascots from. So then high schools in the
nineteen thirties and nineteen forties start developing their own mascots,
and most of the time they duplicated what they saw.
Schools are short funded, and so they decide, well, we're
going to use what Louisiana State University uses as a
(09:58):
tiger or not. We're the fighting Irish, they're the fighting Irish.
We begin to identify with these things in the nineteen fifties.
By the nineteen fifties, most high schools were tigers or
hawks or something that had a simple that the students
could bond around and maybe a banner or some sort
(10:19):
of image.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
But something else happened in the nineteen fifties that suddenly
brought a new mascot named to high schools.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Oh across the South. It's got to be brown versus board.
In the mid late fifties, right after Brown, and that's
mainly public schools, and they're trying to get across that.
I know the FEDS have said that they want to integrate,
but we are a new school that has to at
least do something to save money because we have this
(10:49):
dual system. And the dual system was separate but definitely unequal.
And so what school districts and cities and states decided
to do was, instead of being separate but unequal, if
we make the the African American accommodations comparable to the
white ones, they're less prone to won't integrate. And so
let's merge all the white schools in our county or
(11:12):
in this area and form a new school. And then
we'll do the same thing with the black schools in
our county or in our city. And so from that
we'll have separate and equal and they'll be less want
to try to integrate the schools. And so the white
schools would merge together and they would become the Rebels
of Boyle County or whichever county.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was now. The Rebels name that became popular in
the nineteen fifties just as integration was happening, didn't come
from nowhere, like doctor Smith says, most of the time,
high schools just duplicated what they saw, and what high
schools in the South saw was Ole Miss The University
of Mississippi and their mascot Colonel Reb, the original big
mustache Confederate mascot character.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
There's a lot of duplicates of the Colonel Reb.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
One place that there's not a duplicate of Colonel Reb anymore.
Act University of Mississippi.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
And in two thousand and two they finally did something
with their old Colonel Reb mascot, the Confederate one, and
migrated to a bear in two thousand and eight, and
now they are a land shark of all things.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's right. In two thousand and two, Colonel Reb went
away in Mississippi. They are now inexplicably represented by Tony
the land Shark. Ole Miss however, still goes by the Rebels,
so does the university with the second most famous rebel mascot,
the University of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
were the running Rebels and they were super popular. They
went to I think the elite eight like five out
of six years. Larry Johnson, Stacy Augman I think around
those teams.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
This is Terry Borning from mascot dB dot com. We
spoke with him last episode about the two hundred and
fifty two historical and current rebel mascots around the country.
Terry is originally from Minnesota, where his high school merged
with another to form you guessed it, the Rebels. His
sister was at the school when it happened.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
She remembers rebels, the running rebels of UNLV being a
big factor and they ultimately decided. And I noticed that
quite a bit in Minnesota, Like there's a lot of
rebel steams from Minnesota. So that's one other cultural phenomenon
that I noticed.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Why did Nevada, a state that supported the Union cause,
have any school with a rebel mascot. The short story
is that there was a public university in Reno, and
they created a new site in nineteen fifty seven in
Las Vegas. In nineteen sixty eight. They wanted to separate
themselves from the Northerners to create UNLV, so they called
themselves Rebels. The Northern school had a wolf mascot, so
(13:41):
they originally had a wolf mascot in a Confederate soldier
uniform that Confederate Wolf was retired in the eighties and
became Hey Reb. At this point, you can probably imagine
what he looked like. Big mustache, big hat. The gray
coat was exchanged for more of a Davy Crockett fringe
leather number, but you get the drift is an aside
if you remember. Back to the letter Judy Deathridge wrote
(14:03):
to the Cincinnati Inquirer. She cites the UNLV's Hey Reb
as the inspiration for her husband to create Mister Rebel
at Boon County High School following the racial justice uprisings
of twenty twenty in an outcry around UNLV's Confederate inspired mascot,
hay Reb was retired in twenty twenty one. And in
case you're like, wow, so they confronted their racist past.
(14:24):
This is what's on the unlv website as of twenty
twenty four. UNLV's nickname dates to the university's origin in
the mid nineteen fifties, a time when a nation founded
by rebels once again became obsessed with the idea of
the iconic nonconformist. The decade of the nineteen fifties was
epitomized by young people rebelling against their parents' middle class
American values from popular motion pictures such as nineteen fifty
(14:47):
three's The Wild One starring Marlon Brando, in nineteen fifty
five's Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, listener James
Dean did not die for this. We'll be right back.
While hay Reb went away in twenty twenty one, UNLV,
like Ole miss are still the Rebels. Most every rebel
school you look at is either a knockoff of ole
(15:09):
Missus Colonel Reb or UNLV's Hayreb, or some combination of
sabers and Civil warhats. But once you really start looking,
you start noticing the academies with fancy crests sporting the
name rebel.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
When I was doing some research, especially for the South,
I found there were some in the nineteen fifties and
nineteen sixties. There's a lot of academies that use rebels
as a mascot. And when I did some research on them,
they are called segregation academies, which is kind of shocking.
It is basically these private charter schools that when the
(15:42):
Civil Rights said that we need to integrate public schools,
these charter schools were exempt from.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
That into the nineteen sixties becomes evident that the states
and the school districts will have to integrate. It's realized,
oh no, there's no way that we can actually persist
with this separate but equal and however you want to
call that of a setup. And so then they start
(16:09):
moving kids to private schools, especially in the Deep South.
We'll see Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana start constructing these white
flight academies from sixty eight to about seventy two, and
their hardline stance was, we are forming just for white people,
and if you are not white, you cannot come to
(16:32):
this school. And here is our sign to you, this
Confederate rebel on the door saying you cannot come into
this school.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So a number of these charter segregation academies still exist,
and they might have, you know, like a couple of
students that are able to pay the tuition to come in,
but they're still predominantly white kids that are going there.
And those surprisingly, well maybe not surprisingly, when I did
my research, there's a lot of these academies that still
rebels as their.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Mascot, like Riverdale Academy and Cushada Louisiana that still has
a physical mascot, a mister Rebel character with white mustache
and hat. This school gained notoriety during a nineteen seventy
Congressional hearing for its ties to the broader issue of
public support for these private academies. These academies received benefits
such as discounted school buildings, free buses, and donated textbooks
(17:24):
at the expense of public funds. In nineteen seventy, the
county where Cushata is located was forty two percent black,
and all these resources were going to one private school.
The term rebel in this context isn't about creativity or nonconformity.
It means diverting resources from black students to maintain white
only institutions. Another example, John Hancock Academy in Georgia, was
(17:46):
established a year after a single black student enrolled at
Sparta High School. It still exists today with the rebel
mascot using the ole Miss Colonel Rev logo. On their
website is the following statement. At this particular time, when
political correctness is so prevalent, we must stand firm or
against worldly influences and point our young people toward the
(18:08):
truth of God's word. More so now than ever before.
It's time to stand up and be a rebel, and.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
It's linked to power. It's linked to this reminder of
remember who's in charge. It are people who are in charge,
not your people.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Sometimes you have to fight the power. And lawsuits around
rebel mascots date back to nineteen seventy, when black students
in Munsey, Indiana, filed a class action lawsuit against the district,
alleging racial discrimination in redistricting, bussing, and in the use
of the rebel mascot at Munsey Southside High School, the
rebel students said was offensive, inflammatory, and discourage black students
(18:46):
from participating in extracurricular activities. The students lost because the
court found that the majority of white students in favor
of the rebel would have their First Amendment rights violated
if the rebel name was removed, though they did agree
that the Confederate imagery was offensive in good policy, though
apparently not a court of law would dictate its removal.
Munsey Southside High School stayed the rebels until it was
(19:09):
closed in twenty fifteen. Black students in Pensacola, Florida, filed
a class action lawsuit three years later in nineteen seventy
three at their high school, Escambia High School, and listener,
strap in, because wherever you think the story's going, it's
gone somewhere else. Escambia opened in nineteen fifty eight as
an all white school. Dixie was its marching song and
(19:30):
the Rebel was their mascot. Forced to integrate in nineteen
sixty nine, there was simmering tension between the new black
students and the hostile white ones that boiled over into
violence in nineteen seventy two. By July nineteen seventy three,
black students had gotten an injunction in US district Court
against the use of Confederate imagery at the school. The
next school year they were the Escambia Readers, and everything
(19:52):
could have probably been okay except the school board and
white students appealed the ruling, and in nineteen seventy five
the US Court of Appea Dee overturned the district court
ruling and left it to the school board to sort out,
which they did in February nineteen seventy six when they
held an election between the Raiders and the Rebels and
the Rebel name loss, which is when the white students
(20:13):
on the losing side rioted, and over the course of
four hours, four students were shot shot thirty were injured.
Over one hundred windows in the school were smashed, trophy cases, clocks,
and water fountains were destroyed, and a waterpipe flooded an
entire wing of the school. By the end of the chaos,
police had confiscated two truckloads of knives, chains, bricks, and clubs.
(20:37):
The next day, one hundred twenty clansmen rallied outside of town.
In the following weeks, crosses were burned on school board
members lawns, and two people, a member of the school
board's Citizen Advisory Committee and a state representative, had their
homes burned down. All this over a mascot which never
came back. Escambia High School has been the Gators since
nineteen seventy eight. Nothing it's as not as Ascambia, I mean, okay,
(21:05):
But the most impactful lawsuit around the revel name came
in nineteen eighty five in Fairfax, Virginia.
Speaker 5 (21:11):
You have a case where the principle there realizes that
there's a problem that there are African Americans in the
school who don't salute the flag or don't represent the
flag and this could cause real issues. Now, Fairfax was
a more forward thinking and progressive town in the eighties
than most other places in the South, and so he
(21:34):
bans the Confederate flag and bans Confederate imagery to try
to put out the fire before it gets too big
in the school. And so from that case went all
the way to the Supreme Court about the question of
freedom of speech of the students compared to trying to
prevent problems from occurring in an educational environment.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
For Leonards, the case is Crosby versus Whole. Wolsinger was
the principal who took a stand against the Confederate imagery,
and Crosby represents the white students who just want their
rebel back. But unlike the previous two rebel cases where
courts ultimately decided for the racist white students, this time
the court found for the principal. The case was appealed
because of course it was, and it took five more years,
(22:20):
but the decision came down in nineteen ninety and the
Confederate imagery, but not the name rebel, was ended in Fairfax.
It would take another nineteen years to drop the rebel name.
Fairfax High school is now the Lions short and I'm
not joking for Rebel Lion rebellion. While there have been
(22:40):
three court cases about the Rebel name, the reality is
that the courts aren't the main driver of change here.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
Sadly, this is the bad part about this is that
those changes always occur when tragedy, especially a racially tinged tragedy, happens.
Charles to George Floyd, like, we see these things over
and over again, and that's when people kind of realize, whoa,
oh wow, that was something serious, what exactly are we
(23:07):
putting forth. In the end, it kind of starts fading
away and then we forget about it, and then something
else will happen. And it's always tragedy that leads to
these changes, which I hate that it happens that way,
but that's just the nature of a lot of different things.
The reason that we do a lot of the just
passing laws or bills or whatever. Usually some tragedy happens
(23:30):
and then we try to fix it after the fact,
and so we feel responsible for trying to fix it.
And this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
In researching this episode, you see a wave of attempts
at ditching Rebel mascots in the early nineteen nineties, after
the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD and the
riots that followed the cops not guilty verdict. Most of
those attempts failed. You see more traction following the Charleston
Church massacre in twenty fifteen, and more momentum building following
(23:57):
the white supremacist march and subsequent murder of Heather Hare
and Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. But it's the police murders
of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in twenty twenty that
kicked off a significant wave of change, including Spencer's petition
to change the Boone County Rebels, Annie Wilson's success at
Chuloe Valley School, and the end of the Courts High
Rebels in Antelope Valley, California.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh Man, who was I in high school? I was
just a big.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Lost goofball. I guess you could say, like unfinished Clay.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
This is Tyros quartz Hill Rebel class of nineteen ninety two,
and Tyros is complicated. Tyros is a comedian, an actor,
a professional wrestler. He wrestled in the WWE under the
name the Funkosaurus and Tyros is also a Fox News contributor.
Speaker 9 (24:48):
We saw Trump speaking, we saw a guy speaking for
the common name. I would think a transgendered woman winning
in the men's division would be just as powerful, if
would say more about equality than having to hop over
to the women. It just seems that these woke ambassadors
always seem to miss them. Everyone wants to get rid
of the police. These ideas are wrong.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Well, most people we've talked to about rebel mascots might
be the type of person that Tyros would rail about
as a guest on Gutfeld. How I am the type
of person that Tyros would rail about as a guest
on Gutfeld. But there's something we can agree on. Don't
go away. Tyros was outspoken and supportive in twenty twenty
when courts Hill moved from the rebels to the royals.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
I was a history buff in US history with my teacher,
mister Ray. I wrote a paper about I was going
to go to America early and warn the Indians. Oh,
I'll start, I'll start off with that. So when and
it was at that age where you become aware of
(25:50):
anything like Confederate flag, and we were rebels in terms
of like we didn't fit in with the other schools.
We were smaller. Everyone else had won before, so and
we started winning, especially our football program, our basketball program.
We were always great about taking leftovers and making it
into something beautiful, like and I always thought that was
(26:12):
cool when you take something ugly and you make you
refurbish it. That the generals back in the day would
not be thrilled. It would be myself a rebel, So
I kind of get it from that perspective. It is
like it's ours now. When we twisted morphin the school.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Did they have that like Confederate general mascot?
Speaker 8 (26:29):
I think they did, but I think we changed it.
I think it was a dog And it's true.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
You go to check out the nineteen eighty nine Quartz
Hill High School yearbook and painted on the side of
the building as a Confederate flag with a Confederate soldier
saber and all. Mind you, this is a school in
southern California. They removed their mascot. Also in the nineties,
the fallout from Rodney King probably hit a little harder
in Socow, but they kept the rebel name. Always the
(26:55):
last thing to go, isn't it this progression that Tyrus
is describing from a Confederate general to a dog to
eventually the Royals is one we've seen over and over
even Boone County High School drop the flag and drop
the general. They just haven't lost the name. It's enough
of a pattern that Caleb can rattle it off in
his sleep.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
We see that multiple times that these they'll first start
addressing the Confederate nature, the confederateness of mascots that there are,
you know, plantation owners that fly a rebel flag that
you know, look like an old Confederate general. They'll start
getting rid of them, and then they'll just go to
(27:37):
just the term rebels or just the county schools like
r DC or whatever lettering of using an actual image.
Well that then people are like, well, great, we're the
flying g's. Now there's not really an image we can
use now because the name that we've been using is
so hot button, we're just going to which is our
(28:01):
county name, and so that's what.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
We're going to go with, Loon County. They're just the
letters B and see. Now it's like there is a
single playbook and they're just running through it. But enough
about me and my high school. Let's get back to Tyris.
Speaker 8 (28:14):
In his it wasn't the environmental where somebody was using
it when the Farius name like, it wasn't like, hey, rebels,
shouldn't be no ND bombs on your team.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
There wasn't. There was none of that negativity coming from anywhere.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
So, and it wasn't prevalent in our cities and our
town and stuff. So whereas the South, there'll be people
with who would be paying a confeditive flag in their
front yard and stuff. And I live in Louisiana, I
still see it. But in California you just didn't have that.
So unless somebody really brought it up and brought it
to everyone's attention, we don't need rebel football teams in California.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I don't think Tyrus and I probably agree on much,
though his moves as the Funkosaurus were pretty good, But
we do agree on this. The rebel name has got
to go.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
It's a word that unfortunately is forever seen, and we
don't need it in high school.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, there's enough good stuff out there.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And then Tyrs brings up perhaps the simplest, most succinct,
and powerfully persuasive argument against keeping the name of the
rebels that I have ever heard.
Speaker 8 (29:15):
My question was always why would we want to be
the losing team? I just take all the other stuff
out of it. We're rocking the team with the l.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Why would any school want to be associated with the
losing team? Who chooses a loser for their sports mascot? Well, racists,
I guess, but you all know that. Talking to Tyros,
talking to Annie Wilson, talking to Terry Boring, and doctor
Caleb Smith, it's clear that change is possible, even if
it doesn't happen overnight. Though for my sake, I hope
(29:49):
it doesn't take over a decade to get done at
Boone County High School. And it gives me an opportunity
to hope, even fleetingly, and.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
To ask.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Is there a future without this crap?
Speaker 5 (30:00):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
There is, again, doctor Caleb Smith.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
And I'll go back to the state flag of Mississippi,
because in two thousand and one, we had an election
where we voted on whether we wanted to keep the
old Confederate battle flag on our state flag or not.
And so in that election, it's like almost two to
one we voted to keep the old Confederate flag. Well,
(30:25):
fast forward nineteen years, we had another vote in twenty
twenty in that vote two to one in favor of
a new flag. We see that the younger people who
grow up in an integrated society, they go to school
with people of other ethnicities and other races, that they're
more willing to realize that maybe this whole thing is
(30:47):
not about me and my race or however you want
to find that, and instead, let's see if we can
include other people. Let's check our racism at the door
and see if we figure out out, you know, is
this really a good symbol of everyone, of the people
of this school, district, or county, or state or whatever.
(31:10):
So there is hope. Since like nineteen ninety five, there
have been zero schools that have added a rebel mascot.
So no school since ninety five has said, you know what,
of all the mascots, we could choose tigers and hawks
and bears, we're gonna go with the rebel because that
one just seems really no Like, no school has done
(31:32):
that since ninety five, And so that shows a little
bit of people at least being cautious of what is
actually represented with what they use. We see from not
from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one, there are almost
thirty schools in the United States that drop the term
rebel because they realized this is a term we don't
(31:55):
really want to deal with anymore. So, I mean, if
Mississippi can change it's flag, it kind of shows you
whoa whoa. You know, if they're changing their flag, there's
something really serious that we need to look at here
and address this whole issue.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
All these conversations really got me thinking, like, is it
ever easy? What are the ingredients that somehow magically caused
this change to happen in a way that is quick
and met with excitement. Luckily, in our next episode, I
think we've maybe found a beacon of hope in Denver
South High School that shows us what is possible when
(32:30):
there's a high profile alumni like an NFL player who
is willing to push for change in school administrators who
welcome it. Next week will dive deep into the Denver
South case study in how they were able to pull
off something incredible. Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth
(32:51):
Planet Audio and association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing
by me Akila Hughes. I'm also an executive producer and
the host. Produced by Dan Sinker, edited by Josie A.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Zahm Our.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Assistant editor is Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun,
Sound design and mixing by Josie A. Zahm 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 Dilfried Singh. Additional research
(33:26):
support from Janie Dillard. Executive producers for Ninth Planet Audio
are Elizabeth Baqutt and Jimmy Miller. Special thanks to Jay
Becker and the whole team at BLDG, the Florence y'alls,
Amber Hoffmann, Hillary Delaney, and Leslie Chambers. If you have
a racist mascot at your high school, or are an
alumni of a high school with a racist mascot and
want to share your own experience, please email us at
(33:49):
Rebel Spirit Podcast at gmail dot com. We would love
to hear from you.
My overlanding rentro No, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I know.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Ninth Planet Audio cap com We're over landing, You're over landing.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Over Change happens to people in lots of different ways.
For Annie Wilson in two thousand and two, as an
eighth grader attending the Kullowe Valley School in North Carolina,
it happened with a mascot.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I remember going on a school field trip to the
university library and they had a display at the library
about indigenous symbols used as mascots, like the chiefs and
the redskins and the braves, all of that. So that,
I think is really where my interest in this started.
And then I started cheering and noticing other mascots in
(00:49):
our region that were cool, like the eagles and the mustang.
Why is a gross old man.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
As our mascot?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You already know what I'm going to say, right, big
white mustache, big hat, gray coat. Yes, the Kullowe Valley School,
where Annie Wilson was in middle school, were the rebels.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I remember complaining to my parents about that and then
them helping me kind of connect those dots with you know,
those kind of indigenous mascot symbols. And the Revel. And
so I was the president of the student council, and
I decided, this is something that I want to do.
I want to change this my mascot.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Annie wrote a letter to her local newspaper, the Silva
Harald and Rural.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
Lite, to the editor, I recently visited an exhibit at
the Western Carolina University Library at.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
Any use of Native American names, symbols and imagery and
sports teams mascots. This was a very interesting and thought
provoking experience for me. I never realized these seemingly innocent
and even positive icons on a deeper level can be
very degrading and damaging to the culture on which they're taken.
Then I started think about my own school's mascot, the Rebels.
(02:01):
I have attended Colwee Valley School my whole life. I
am now in the eighth grade, president of student council,
and a cheerleader. I have therefore been closely associated with
our mascot. I've worn the image on my clothes, drawing
it on my notebooks, and so forth. But I've now
started to wonder if it is really an appropriate symbol
for our school. In the year two thousand and two
and beyond. People say it represents our heritage and we
(02:24):
should honor it and respect it. I am a Native
Southerner myself, as both of my parents are and all
of their parents, and I do love much about the
Southern culture, its openness and friendliness, its appreciation for the outdoors.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
And naturally Any lays it all out the history of
racism in America, from slavery to Jim Crow, and how
it still reverberates today at her school.
Speaker 6 (02:48):
Although many of my friends are not racists and mean
no harm by their support of the mascot, I have
discovered that the rebel is deeply troubling and offensive to
all our African American students and their families, and this
grew includes my very closest friends. It is time for
us to shed this unfortunate image of the past and
to select a new mascot with positive imagery and associations.
(03:10):
The plan to initiate this project is within the student
council at CBS, but we will need the support of
the community in order to be successful in achieving this
positive change. Annie mccorn, eighth grader, Kloe Valley School.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Annie's letter ran and the reaction was immediate.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
The first response was a response to support, which was
really exciting. But then then negative, negative pushback started coming out,
and so other strongly worded letters in the newspaper, parents
having strong opinions that they then you give to their children,
and their children coming to school and fighting with me
(03:49):
about why are you doing this? So I remember, you know,
heated debates with classmates but also administrators in the school system.
And then and then I have a very visceral, vivid
memory of receiving a phone call to our house phone
one day that dates me pretty hard, and it was
(04:12):
for me, and I remember taking the call in my parents'
bedroom for some reason, and it was an older man
who told me that he had a shotgun and he
knew where I lived and that I better stop.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
And that was scary.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
That was really.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Scary, scary enough that Annie left. She enrolled in a
boarding school in Pennsylvania and later went to college in Washington.
Speaker 7 (04:36):
D C.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
It wasn't until she had a child that she thought
about returning back home to Kullowe, where she now teaches
at Western Carolina University, and that child they went to
Collowee Valley School, still home of the rebels, that is
until twenty twenty the murder of George Floyd and a
conversation that began, of course on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
So those conversations are happening about like what do we do,
what can we do in our community? And somebody brought
up why is the rebel still the mascot at Kelly Valley?
And you'd take up this story from years before and
reached out to me.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Eighteen years after she wrote the letter that led to
her leaving town. Annie Wilson was the face of changing
the rebel mascot again, but this time she wasn't a child,
and she wasn't alone.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
We get several hundred people that are supporting this change
and trying to figure out, like, Okay, what do we do?
And there's so much organization and support, which was really cool.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
They did outreach, they started a GoFundMe, they met with
the principal, everything pointed in one direction, the school board.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Then we started communicating with the school board so that
we could get on the schedule for the school board.
And so I would say from the time that we
created the Facebook group to the time that we were
able to present to the school board, it was probably
about eight months.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Annie may have waited eighteen years, but she finally had
her moment to make the case.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Ultimately, it goes in front of the school board and
we just kind of forced a vote after making our
presentation and our pleas. There was a couple of school
board meetings where they were getting input from the community
and things like that, and then ultimately when it was voted,
it was a unanimous vote to replace them.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
That's right, listener, The Kloe Valley Rebels are now as
of June second, twenty twenty one, the Klowe Valley Wolves.
It really can happen.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I was a lady rebel, like, what does that even need?
Speaker 4 (06:30):
The Boone County Rebels will stay, the Boone County Rebels
with the image.
Speaker 7 (06:34):
Of right here in black and white, the.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Friends bigger than a flag or mask on.
Speaker 7 (06:39):
Anytime you're trying to mess with tradition, you get to
be ready for a serious backlash.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
From Ninth Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes and this is
Rebel Spiral, Episode six. Other Rebels. There was a point
where I thought Boone County High School was unique in
their rebel name. I actually couldn't have been more wrong.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
There's South great Nick High School. South greatnick Long Island
nineteen eighty four. They had a Confederate flag on the
side of their football helmet.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
So if you want to know all there is to
know about schools that have used the rebels name, there
is no better person to talk to than doctor Caleb Smith.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Briarfield Academy in Lake Providence, Louisiana is a good example
of that. Humphreys Academy in Belzoni, Mississippi, is another one
like that. Oh gosh, I just went blank. There's several
Hickory Flat in Mississippi, George County, Mississippi, Harrison City.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
There are so many rebel schools that it's hard to
keep straight. Doctor Smith should know. He wrote his dissertation
on the rebel name in high schools. It's title The
Rebel Made Me Do It, Mascot's Race and the Lost
Cause get him started, and he doesn't stop.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
There's a school in Texas called Evadelle, and Evadelle is
probably the most egregious of the rebel schools that I know.
Their school emblem is the Confederate battle flag. It got
so bad that Google actually pulled their school website for
being a hate speech site because of that image of
(08:15):
the Confederate battle flag. Highland High School in Hardy, Arkansas
is one that comes to mind that they had on
one side of the sign was an American flag and
on the other side was a Confederate flag. There was
an instance and I love this story in Kirkland, Washington.
Janita High School was built in the early seventies and
(08:35):
they decided they were going to do an experimental type
of educational system with really short periods of classes in
really a varied from the norm. So from that they
decided to call themselves the Rebels. And they even adopted
like an eagle as their image even though they were
called the rebels, so it really rebels against everything. But
(08:58):
by nineteen eighty five there's a Confederate flag on the
front of their yearbook.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah, it seems like all roads for revel lead to
Confederate crap. Before we get to the Confederate crap, how
about a quick trip through mascot history with Doctor Smith.
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Colleges had the first real mascots that we can really identify.
You can go all the way back to Harvard having
Theirs and Yelle having Theirs as the earliest. But schools
developed mascots for lots of different reasons. Sometimes it was
just a type in the newspaper, or some editor said, well,
this team, they were really mean looking and they looked
(09:36):
like a crimson tide because of the way they attacked
the field. And so that's where we get a lot
of our mascots from. So then high schools in the
nineteen thirties and nineteen forties start developing their own mascots,
and most of the time they duplicated what they saw.
Schools are short funded, and so they decide, well, we're
going to use what Louisiana State University uses as a
(09:58):
tiger or not. We're the fighting Irish, they're the fighting Irish.
We begin to identify with these things in the nineteen fifties.
By the nineteen fifties, most high schools were tigers or
hawks or something that had a simple that the students
could bond around and maybe a banner or some sort
(10:19):
of image.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
But something else happened in the nineteen fifties that suddenly
brought a new mascot named to high schools.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Oh across the South. It's got to be brown versus board.
In the mid late fifties, right after Brown, and that's
mainly public schools, and they're trying to get across that.
I know the FEDS have said that they want to integrate,
but we are a new school that has to at
least do something to save money because we have this
(10:49):
dual system. And the dual system was separate but definitely unequal.
And so what school districts and cities and states decided
to do was, instead of being separate but unequal, if
we make the the African American accommodations comparable to the
white ones, they're less prone to won't integrate. And so
let's merge all the white schools in our county or
(11:12):
in this area and form a new school. And then
we'll do the same thing with the black schools in
our county or in our city. And so from that
we'll have separate and equal and they'll be less want
to try to integrate the schools. And so the white
schools would merge together and they would become the Rebels
of Boyle County or whichever county.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It was now. The Rebels name that became popular in
the nineteen fifties just as integration was happening, didn't come
from nowhere, like doctor Smith says, most of the time,
high schools just duplicated what they saw, and what high
schools in the South saw was Ole Miss The University
of Mississippi and their mascot Colonel Reb, the original big
mustache Confederate mascot character.
Speaker 5 (11:52):
There's a lot of duplicates of the Colonel Reb.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
One place that there's not a duplicate of Colonel Reb anymore.
Act University of Mississippi.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
And in two thousand and two they finally did something
with their old Colonel Reb mascot, the Confederate one, and
migrated to a bear in two thousand and eight, and
now they are a land shark of all things.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
That's right. In two thousand and two, Colonel Reb went
away in Mississippi. They are now inexplicably represented by Tony
the land Shark. Ole Miss however, still goes by the Rebels,
so does the university with the second most famous rebel mascot,
the University of Las Vegas.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
were the running Rebels and they were super popular. They
went to I think the elite eight like five out
of six years. Larry Johnson, Stacy Augman I think around
those teams.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
This is Terry Borning from mascot dB dot com. We
spoke with him last episode about the two hundred and
fifty two historical and current rebel mascots around the country.
Terry is originally from Minnesota, where his high school merged
with another to form you guessed it, the Rebels. His
sister was at the school when it happened.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
She remembers rebels, the running rebels of UNLV being a
big factor and they ultimately decided. And I noticed that
quite a bit in Minnesota, Like there's a lot of
rebel steams from Minnesota. So that's one other cultural phenomenon
that I noticed.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Why did Nevada, a state that supported the Union cause,
have any school with a rebel mascot. The short story
is that there was a public university in Reno, and
they created a new site in nineteen fifty seven in
Las Vegas. In nineteen sixty eight. They wanted to separate
themselves from the Northerners to create UNLV, so they called
themselves Rebels. The Northern school had a wolf mascot, so
(13:41):
they originally had a wolf mascot in a Confederate soldier
uniform that Confederate Wolf was retired in the eighties and
became Hey Reb. At this point, you can probably imagine
what he looked like. Big mustache, big hat. The gray
coat was exchanged for more of a Davy Crockett fringe
leather number, but you get the drift is an aside
if you remember. Back to the letter Judy Deathridge wrote
(14:03):
to the Cincinnati Inquirer. She cites the UNLV's Hey Reb
as the inspiration for her husband to create Mister Rebel
at Boon County High School following the racial justice uprisings
of twenty twenty in an outcry around UNLV's Confederate inspired mascot,
hay Reb was retired in twenty twenty one. And in
case you're like, wow, so they confronted their racist past.
(14:24):
This is what's on the unlv website as of twenty
twenty four. UNLV's nickname dates to the university's origin in
the mid nineteen fifties, a time when a nation founded
by rebels once again became obsessed with the idea of
the iconic nonconformist. The decade of the nineteen fifties was
epitomized by young people rebelling against their parents' middle class
American values from popular motion pictures such as nineteen fifty
(14:47):
three's The Wild One starring Marlon Brando, in nineteen fifty
five's Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean, listener James
Dean did not die for this. We'll be right back.
While hay Reb went away in twenty twenty one, UNLV,
like Ole miss are still the Rebels. Most every rebel
school you look at is either a knockoff of ole
(15:09):
Missus Colonel Reb or UNLV's Hayreb, or some combination of
sabers and Civil warhats. But once you really start looking,
you start noticing the academies with fancy crests sporting the
name rebel.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
When I was doing some research, especially for the South,
I found there were some in the nineteen fifties and
nineteen sixties. There's a lot of academies that use rebels
as a mascot. And when I did some research on them,
they are called segregation academies, which is kind of shocking.
It is basically these private charter schools that when the
(15:42):
Civil Rights said that we need to integrate public schools,
these charter schools were exempt from.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
That into the nineteen sixties becomes evident that the states
and the school districts will have to integrate. It's realized,
oh no, there's no way that we can actually persist
with this separate but equal and however you want to
call that of a setup. And so then they start
(16:09):
moving kids to private schools, especially in the Deep South.
We'll see Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana start constructing these white
flight academies from sixty eight to about seventy two, and
their hardline stance was, we are forming just for white people,
and if you are not white, you cannot come to
(16:32):
this school. And here is our sign to you, this
Confederate rebel on the door saying you cannot come into
this school.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
So a number of these charter segregation academies still exist,
and they might have, you know, like a couple of
students that are able to pay the tuition to come in,
but they're still predominantly white kids that are going there.
And those surprisingly, well maybe not surprisingly, when I did
my research, there's a lot of these academies that still
rebels as their.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Mascot, like Riverdale Academy and Cushada Louisiana that still has
a physical mascot, a mister Rebel character with white mustache
and hat. This school gained notoriety during a nineteen seventy
Congressional hearing for its ties to the broader issue of
public support for these private academies. These academies received benefits
such as discounted school buildings, free buses, and donated textbooks
(17:24):
at the expense of public funds. In nineteen seventy, the
county where Cushata is located was forty two percent black,
and all these resources were going to one private school.
The term rebel in this context isn't about creativity or nonconformity.
It means diverting resources from black students to maintain white
only institutions. Another example, John Hancock Academy in Georgia, was
(17:46):
established a year after a single black student enrolled at
Sparta High School. It still exists today with the rebel
mascot using the ole Miss Colonel Rev logo. On their
website is the following statement. At this particular time, when
political correctness is so prevalent, we must stand firm or
against worldly influences and point our young people toward the
(18:08):
truth of God's word. More so now than ever before.
It's time to stand up and be a rebel, and.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
It's linked to power. It's linked to this reminder of
remember who's in charge. It are people who are in charge,
not your people.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Sometimes you have to fight the power. And lawsuits around
rebel mascots date back to nineteen seventy, when black students
in Munsey, Indiana, filed a class action lawsuit against the district,
alleging racial discrimination in redistricting, bussing, and in the use
of the rebel mascot at Munsey Southside High School, the
rebel students said was offensive, inflammatory, and discourage black students
(18:46):
from participating in extracurricular activities. The students lost because the
court found that the majority of white students in favor
of the rebel would have their First Amendment rights violated
if the rebel name was removed, though they did agree
that the Confederate imagery was offensive in good policy, though
apparently not a court of law would dictate its removal.
Munsey Southside High School stayed the rebels until it was
(19:09):
closed in twenty fifteen. Black students in Pensacola, Florida, filed
a class action lawsuit three years later in nineteen seventy
three at their high school, Escambia High School, and listener,
strap in, because wherever you think the story's going, it's
gone somewhere else. Escambia opened in nineteen fifty eight as
an all white school. Dixie was its marching song and
(19:30):
the Rebel was their mascot. Forced to integrate in nineteen
sixty nine, there was simmering tension between the new black
students and the hostile white ones that boiled over into
violence in nineteen seventy two. By July nineteen seventy three,
black students had gotten an injunction in US district Court
against the use of Confederate imagery at the school. The
next school year they were the Escambia Readers, and everything
(19:52):
could have probably been okay except the school board and
white students appealed the ruling, and in nineteen seventy five
the US Court of Appea Dee overturned the district court
ruling and left it to the school board to sort out,
which they did in February nineteen seventy six when they
held an election between the Raiders and the Rebels and
the Rebel name loss, which is when the white students
(20:13):
on the losing side rioted, and over the course of
four hours, four students were shot shot thirty were injured.
Over one hundred windows in the school were smashed, trophy cases, clocks,
and water fountains were destroyed, and a waterpipe flooded an
entire wing of the school. By the end of the chaos,
police had confiscated two truckloads of knives, chains, bricks, and clubs.
(20:37):
The next day, one hundred twenty clansmen rallied outside of town.
In the following weeks, crosses were burned on school board
members lawns, and two people, a member of the school
board's Citizen Advisory Committee and a state representative, had their
homes burned down. All this over a mascot which never
came back. Escambia High School has been the Gators since
nineteen seventy eight. Nothing it's as not as Ascambia, I mean, okay,
(21:05):
But the most impactful lawsuit around the revel name came
in nineteen eighty five in Fairfax, Virginia.
Speaker 5 (21:11):
You have a case where the principle there realizes that
there's a problem that there are African Americans in the
school who don't salute the flag or don't represent the
flag and this could cause real issues. Now, Fairfax was
a more forward thinking and progressive town in the eighties
than most other places in the South, and so he
(21:34):
bans the Confederate flag and bans Confederate imagery to try
to put out the fire before it gets too big
in the school. And so from that case went all
the way to the Supreme Court about the question of
freedom of speech of the students compared to trying to
prevent problems from occurring in an educational environment.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
For Leonards, the case is Crosby versus Whole. Wolsinger was
the principal who took a stand against the Confederate imagery,
and Crosby represents the white students who just want their
rebel back. But unlike the previous two rebel cases where
courts ultimately decided for the racist white students, this time
the court found for the principal. The case was appealed
because of course it was, and it took five more years,
(22:20):
but the decision came down in nineteen ninety and the
Confederate imagery, but not the name rebel, was ended in Fairfax.
It would take another nineteen years to drop the rebel name.
Fairfax High school is now the Lions short and I'm
not joking for Rebel Lion rebellion. While there have been
(22:40):
three court cases about the Rebel name, the reality is
that the courts aren't the main driver of change here.
Speaker 5 (22:46):
Sadly, this is the bad part about this is that
those changes always occur when tragedy, especially a racially tinged tragedy, happens.
Charles to George Floyd, like, we see these things over
and over again, and that's when people kind of realize, whoa,
oh wow, that was something serious, what exactly are we
(23:07):
putting forth. In the end, it kind of starts fading
away and then we forget about it, and then something
else will happen. And it's always tragedy that leads to
these changes, which I hate that it happens that way,
but that's just the nature of a lot of different things.
The reason that we do a lot of the just
passing laws or bills or whatever. Usually some tragedy happens
(23:30):
and then we try to fix it after the fact,
and so we feel responsible for trying to fix it.
And this is what we do.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
In researching this episode, you see a wave of attempts
at ditching Rebel mascots in the early nineteen nineties, after
the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD and the
riots that followed the cops not guilty verdict. Most of
those attempts failed. You see more traction following the Charleston
Church massacre in twenty fifteen, and more momentum building following
(23:57):
the white supremacist march and subsequent murder of Heather Hare
and Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. But it's the police murders
of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in twenty twenty that
kicked off a significant wave of change, including Spencer's petition
to change the Boone County Rebels, Annie Wilson's success at
Chuloe Valley School, and the end of the Courts High
Rebels in Antelope Valley, California.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Oh Man, who was I in high school? I was
just a big.
Speaker 8 (24:27):
Lost goofball. I guess you could say, like unfinished Clay.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
This is Tyros quartz Hill Rebel class of nineteen ninety two,
and Tyros is complicated. Tyros is a comedian, an actor,
a professional wrestler. He wrestled in the WWE under the
name the Funkosaurus and Tyros is also a Fox News contributor.
Speaker 9 (24:48):
We saw Trump speaking, we saw a guy speaking for
the common name. I would think a transgendered woman winning
in the men's division would be just as powerful, if
would say more about equality than having to hop over
to the women. It just seems that these woke ambassadors
always seem to miss them. Everyone wants to get rid
of the police. These ideas are wrong.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Well, most people we've talked to about rebel mascots might
be the type of person that Tyros would rail about
as a guest on Gutfeld. How I am the type
of person that Tyros would rail about as a guest
on Gutfeld. But there's something we can agree on. Don't
go away. Tyros was outspoken and supportive in twenty twenty
when courts Hill moved from the rebels to the royals.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
I was a history buff in US history with my teacher,
mister Ray. I wrote a paper about I was going
to go to America early and warn the Indians. Oh,
I'll start, I'll start off with that. So when and
it was at that age where you become aware of
(25:50):
anything like Confederate flag, and we were rebels in terms
of like we didn't fit in with the other schools.
We were smaller. Everyone else had won before, so and
we started winning, especially our football program, our basketball program.
We were always great about taking leftovers and making it
into something beautiful, like and I always thought that was
(26:12):
cool when you take something ugly and you make you
refurbish it. That the generals back in the day would
not be thrilled. It would be myself a rebel, So
I kind of get it from that perspective. It is
like it's ours now. When we twisted morphin the school.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Did they have that like Confederate general mascot?
Speaker 8 (26:29):
I think they did, but I think we changed it.
I think it was a dog And it's true.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
You go to check out the nineteen eighty nine Quartz
Hill High School yearbook and painted on the side of
the building as a Confederate flag with a Confederate soldier
saber and all. Mind you, this is a school in
southern California. They removed their mascot. Also in the nineties,
the fallout from Rodney King probably hit a little harder
in Socow, but they kept the rebel name. Always the
(26:55):
last thing to go, isn't it this progression that Tyrus
is describing from a Confederate general to a dog to
eventually the Royals is one we've seen over and over
even Boone County High School drop the flag and drop
the general. They just haven't lost the name. It's enough
of a pattern that Caleb can rattle it off in
his sleep.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
We see that multiple times that these they'll first start
addressing the Confederate nature, the confederateness of mascots that there are,
you know, plantation owners that fly a rebel flag that
you know, look like an old Confederate general. They'll start
getting rid of them, and then they'll just go to
(27:37):
just the term rebels or just the county schools like
r DC or whatever lettering of using an actual image.
Well that then people are like, well, great, we're the
flying g's. Now there's not really an image we can
use now because the name that we've been using is
so hot button, we're just going to which is our
(28:01):
county name, and so that's what.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
We're going to go with, Loon County. They're just the
letters B and see. Now it's like there is a
single playbook and they're just running through it. But enough
about me and my high school. Let's get back to Tyris.
Speaker 8 (28:14):
In his it wasn't the environmental where somebody was using
it when the Farius name like, it wasn't like, hey, rebels,
shouldn't be no ND bombs on your team.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
There wasn't. There was none of that negativity coming from anywhere.
Speaker 8 (28:26):
So, and it wasn't prevalent in our cities and our
town and stuff. So whereas the South, there'll be people
with who would be paying a confeditive flag in their
front yard and stuff. And I live in Louisiana, I
still see it. But in California you just didn't have that.
So unless somebody really brought it up and brought it
to everyone's attention, we don't need rebel football teams in California.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I don't think Tyrus and I probably agree on much,
though his moves as the Funkosaurus were pretty good, But
we do agree on this. The rebel name has got
to go.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
It's a word that unfortunately is forever seen, and we
don't need it in high school.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, there's enough good stuff out there.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
And then Tyrs brings up perhaps the simplest, most succinct,
and powerfully persuasive argument against keeping the name of the
rebels that I have ever heard.
Speaker 8 (29:15):
My question was always why would we want to be
the losing team? I just take all the other stuff
out of it. We're rocking the team with the l.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Why would any school want to be associated with the
losing team? Who chooses a loser for their sports mascot? Well, racists,
I guess, but you all know that. Talking to Tyros,
talking to Annie Wilson, talking to Terry Boring, and doctor
Caleb Smith, it's clear that change is possible, even if
it doesn't happen overnight. Though for my sake, I hope
(29:49):
it doesn't take over a decade to get done at
Boone County High School. And it gives me an opportunity
to hope, even fleetingly, and.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
To ask.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Is there a future without this crap?
Speaker 5 (30:00):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (30:01):
There is, again, doctor Caleb Smith.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
And I'll go back to the state flag of Mississippi,
because in two thousand and one, we had an election
where we voted on whether we wanted to keep the
old Confederate battle flag on our state flag or not.
And so in that election, it's like almost two to
one we voted to keep the old Confederate flag. Well,
(30:25):
fast forward nineteen years, we had another vote in twenty
twenty in that vote two to one in favor of
a new flag. We see that the younger people who
grow up in an integrated society, they go to school
with people of other ethnicities and other races, that they're
more willing to realize that maybe this whole thing is
(30:47):
not about me and my race or however you want
to find that, and instead, let's see if we can
include other people. Let's check our racism at the door
and see if we figure out out, you know, is
this really a good symbol of everyone, of the people
of this school, district, or county, or state or whatever.
(31:10):
So there is hope. Since like nineteen ninety five, there
have been zero schools that have added a rebel mascot.
So no school since ninety five has said, you know what,
of all the mascots, we could choose tigers and hawks
and bears, we're gonna go with the rebel because that
one just seems really no Like, no school has done
(31:32):
that since ninety five, And so that shows a little
bit of people at least being cautious of what is
actually represented with what they use. We see from not
from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one, there are almost
thirty schools in the United States that drop the term
rebel because they realized this is a term we don't
(31:55):
really want to deal with anymore. So, I mean, if
Mississippi can change it's flag, it kind of shows you
whoa whoa. You know, if they're changing their flag, there's
something really serious that we need to look at here
and address this whole issue.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
All these conversations really got me thinking, like, is it
ever easy? What are the ingredients that somehow magically caused
this change to happen in a way that is quick
and met with excitement. Luckily, in our next episode, I
think we've maybe found a beacon of hope in Denver
South High School that shows us what is possible when
(32:30):
there's a high profile alumni like an NFL player who
is willing to push for change in school administrators who
welcome it. Next week will dive deep into the Denver
South case study in how they were able to pull
off something incredible. Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth
(32:51):
Planet Audio and association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing
by me Akila Hughes. I'm also an executive producer and
the host. Produced by Dan Sinker, edited by Josie A.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
Zahm Our.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Assistant editor is Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun,
Sound design and mixing by Josie A. Zahm 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 Dilfried Singh. Additional research
(33:26):
support from Janie Dillard. Executive producers for Ninth Planet Audio
are Elizabeth Baqutt and Jimmy Miller. Special thanks to Jay
Becker and the whole team at BLDG, the Florence y'alls,
Amber Hoffmann, Hillary Delaney, and Leslie Chambers. If you have
a racist mascot at your high school, or are an
alumni of a high school with a racist mascot and
want to share your own experience, please email us at
(33:49):
Rebel Spirit Podcast at gmail dot com. We would love
to hear from you.
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