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Battle brews over Rebel flag
Vestavia High Icons Targeted
11/05/00
JOHN GEROME
News staff writer
Next to Panthers, Pirates, Warriors and Hurricanes, the Vestavia Hills High
School Rebel is a wimp.
A white-haired Southern gentleman with a cane, he looks more like a dejected
Col. Sanders than a firebrand.
Nonetheless, in Vestavia Hills, where he has been the school mascot for 30
years, the Rebel - and the Confederate battle flag - has become a lightning
rod. In recent weeks, The News editorial page has published let ters both
urging his removal and defending his honor.
"Why can't we have a mascot that everyone can be proud of?" wrote Susan
Gilman McAlister, a Birmingham attorney.
The debate is forming into a familiar one. From the Cleveland Indians' Chief
Wahoo to the San Diego State University Aztecs, teams that entertain a
multicultural society struggle to determine where cultural pride ends and
cultural insensitivity begins.
In Vestavia Hills, school officials are on the hot seat as critics claim that
the system and its sports fans glorify the Old South. Particularly galling,
they say, is the waving of the Confederate battle flag at school sporting
events.
"The teachers say it doesn't only represent racism, that it is a symbol of
Southern history and all of that," said Melanie Garrett, a recent Vestavia
Hills High graduate. "But our history wasn't anything happy. It doesn't
remind us of anything happy."
Superintendent Jamie Blair and the city school board are expected to discuss
the flag issue at the board's Nov. 29 meeting. Officials could decide whether
to ban it from games.
Blair is less concerned about the mascot, saying he's only received one
complaint about the Rebel in the eight months he's been superintendent.
Flag a tradition
Although Blair said the Confederate flag is not an official symbol for the
school system, it has become a tradition with fans in the affluent,
predominantly white suburb.
Rosemary Fisk, a 10-year Vestavia Hills resident with two children in school,
said that after a football game this season with Hoover, which Vestavia Hills
won in the final 13 seconds, fans carrying Confederate flags poured onto the
field.
"It looked like a Klan rally," she said.
Mrs. Fisk asked the school board on Sept. 27 to ban the flag from school
property, and Blair told attorney Pat Boone to investigate. Blair said
Wednesday that a report will be made at the board meeting.
Board President Tealla Stewart said any action by the board would have to
come on a recommendation by the superintendent.
The school system is in a precarious position, Ms. Stewart said. "We do walk
a fine line in that we cannot tell any individual what they can and cannot
do" in expressing themselves.
Ninety percent of the 1,400 students at Vestavia Hills High are white. Blacks
are the largest minority at 4.6 percent, while Asians make up 3.8 percent and
Hispanics 1 percent.
Overall, the Vestavia Hills school system has about 75 black children, Blair
said. Most live outside the Vestavia Hills city limits in the tiny Oxmoor
community. A 1971 court order zoned the area for Vestavia Hills schools.
Symbol of school spirit
Sammy Dunn, baseball coach and assistant principal at the high school, said
most everyone at the school views the flag and the mascot as symbols of
school spirit, not racism.
"If we thought that flag was waved to harm someone or put down someone we
wouldn't allow it," Dunn said. "In my opinion, it is not waved that way."
When Vestavia Hills plays a team it thinks might find the Confederate flag
offensive, as was the case during a recent game with John Carroll High
School, school officials ask students beforehand not to bring it, Dunn said.
Vestavia Hills finds itself in a situation strikingly similar to the one that
confronted the University of Mississippi a few years ago, when the student
government - trying to prevent fans from waving the Confederate flag - banned
sticks from Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Like Vestavia Hills, Ole Miss is known
as the Rebels.
In response to the ban, Richard Barrett, a lawyer for the white supremacist
National Movement, sued Ole Miss, claiming his First Amendment rights had
been violated.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans this year rejected the claim.
Rebels no more
The Rebel is a popular mascot in Alabama. According to the Alabama High
School Athletic Association handbook, 10 high school football teams in the
state use it.
One that doesn't any more is Clarke Prep School in Grove Hill. Two years ago,
the private school decided to drop the name Rebels. Last year, for the first
time in its 29-year history, Clarke Prep's sports teams were known as the
Gators.
"We wanted to make the school accessible to all people," said Ted Cornelius,
principal of the 275-student, nondenominational school. "We thought the
mascot was a deterrent to people of other races."
Indeed, several black Oxmoor residents this week said they've long been
offended by the mascot and the Confederate battle flag at Vestavia Hills but
felt powerless to do anything about it.
"If you were Jewish, you wouldn't want them waving the Nazi flag," said James
Deamues. "They need to look at the sensitivity to it. That flag means
different things to different people."
Darryl Motley, a 1985 Vestavia Hills graduate who has three children in the
school system, said he didn't pay much attention to the flag or the mascot
while he was a student. Later, it bothered him.
"It creates the wrong environment," Motley said.
One question...how can a mascot make the whole environment at school wrong? I think
they are looking for an excuse.
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