LITTLE ROCK -- An Arkansas school board is considering retiring a high school's "Johnny Reb" mascot after the shooting deaths of nine people inside their historic black church in South Carolina reignited a debate nationwide about the use of symbols of the Confederacy.
A Fort Smith School Board committee voted Tuesday to send a measure to the full school board that would eliminate the Old South anthem "Dixie" as Southside High School's fight song by the start of the next school year and phase out the rebel mascot by the 2016-17 school year. The board in the northwest Arkansas city that borders Oklahoma will likely vote on the measure at its July 27 meeting.
People in Fort Smith say debate there over the issue has been going on for decades. The district in 1990 eliminated the Confederate flag as an official symbol of the school. Nearly a decade later, Principal Wayne Haver banned students from displaying the flag at official school events.
But Haver said Wednesday that he's disappointed that the discussion has been rekindled.
"I've been principal for 33 years, and I was disappointed they didn't do me the courtesy of telling me this would even be brought up," Haver said. "Our kids don't see our symbols or our fight song any differently than kids at other schools see theirs. They don't associate it with the Civil War and all that. It's tradition, and I would hate to see us lose tradition."
School Board Secretary Rick Wade said several board members had informally discussed the issue after pictures of Dylann Roof, the white man charged with shooting and killing the pastor and eight members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, surfaced with him holding a Confederate flag.
"I think the shooting in South Carolina was the catalyst to say, 'Maybe it's time to start re-examining the traditions, whether it's flags or other symbols, that might be perceived to be racially insensitive,'" Wade said.
The pictures reignited conversations in South Carolina over whether the Confederate flag should be removed from the Statehouse.
Alabama's governor, meanwhile, issued an executive order removing four Confederate banners from a monument to secessionist soldiers outside that state's capitol.
Wade said he graduated from a segregated Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida, where the mascot was the Generals and lived through the Civil Rights movement. He said tradition was not reason enough to keep the mascot.
"People say it's political correctness. I disagree with that," he said. "Our society has evolved to the point that we cannot deny there are racial issues that remain in this country. And I, for one, would like to do what I can to rid even the perception of racial insensitivity for our students."
At least five other Arkansas high schools call themselves the Rebels, four of which have a mascot that looks like a version of a Civil War officer. Another high school uses the Southerner as its mascot with a similar depiction.
State Desk on 06/25/2015