'Retire the Rebel': Campaign seeks to remove
Confederate-themed nickname from Indiana school
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Liz Vinson | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
The nickname "Rebels" for the sports teams at Southwestern
High School in Hanover, Indiana, has nothing to do with the
Confederacy, school officials there have long claimed
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.
The school superintendent, in fact, says the name came from the iconic
1955 James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause
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.
But that makes little difference to Julie Patterson, an alumnus who
started a campaign to "Retire the Rebel" after her comment
about the nickname "blew up" a school alumni page on
Facebook.
"If you're a person of color, I would imagine that the
Rebels would color your thinking about what kind of town you're
moving to," Patterson told the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"It's a signal. It talks about your community. Why
wouldn't you want to change it so that everyone feels welcome
here? Why remain so stagnant?"
The fact is, regardless of the nickname's origin, Confederate
imagery was used in association with it almost immediately after the
school opened in 1960 - in the midst of the civil rights
movement - and continued to be used for many years, according to
WFPL radio
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, an NPR affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky.
WFPL reported that the school's 1963 yearbook featured a
Confederate soldier on the cover and that there were "more
obvious references coming in the 1980s and 1990s," including
several depictions of the Confederate battle flag. A Confederate
soldier had also appeared on the 1962 yearbook cover, Patterson said.
A 2019 graduate who played in the pep band told WFPL that a
"Colonel Reb" character was sometimes depicted on flags
waved by students at sports events and that it wasn't uncommon
to see students wearing clothes with Confederate symbols. Nowhere to
be seen was any kind of James Dean likeness.
Patterson's campaign comes at a moment of national reckoning
over race and the country's history of white supremacy -
and schools and sports teams across the country are grappling
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with issues involving their names and what they symbolize.
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
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