September 17, 2024 • 35 mins
In speaking to alumni from Boone County High School willing to share their experiences across multiple decades, a clearer image of all the half-measures taken to remove the confederate imagery and racist symbols from the school emerges–even as the name “Rebels” remains.
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 rebelspiritpodcast@gmail.com. We would love to talk to you!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My own black roller has gone on overlanding Redrow, I don't.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Know, I know gone Ninth Planet Audio cat com We're overlanding, You're.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
No laning over.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
In the late eighties early nineties, they changed the yearbook
from the Highways Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Back to Rebel eight Rebel, and the first page in
color says, go rebels. There's a Confederate flag. I love
the rebels. People holding the sign that says rebels. We're
back at the Burlington branch of the Boone County Library
looking through my high school's yearbooks from the nineteen seventies, eighties,
and nineties. Wild Okay, I'm seeing a black kape the
hides up. I love that. The cool thing is like
(00:42):
you do start to see like one black person every
now and then. Tim Travis always allowed to sit next
to a blonde white girl.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
This is crazy.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Open a yearbook and they tell you stories. Stories of
hairstyles so big in the nineteen eighties, and of fads
that come and go over the years. Stories of the
dreams that everyone has as they prepare to exit the
liminal space between childhood and adulthood. It's all there in
the pages of the Boone County High School yearbooks as
innocent and hilarious as any yearbook on the planet. But
(01:09):
these tell you another story too. I want to look
at nineteen ninety and the Confederate flags on the front.
Now they have Boone County apparel with the Confederate flag
on it that they're selling in the Spirit shop, And
this is nineteen ninety. These yearbooks tell a story of
decades of Confederate imagery, of the stars and bars flying
(01:30):
over football games, held by cheerleaders, sold in the spirit shop.
They tell the story of a short lived Confederate character
in the nineteen seventies named Buford Bugler, who was there
until he wasn't. They tell the story of and I'm
not kidding here, Slave Day, which was heralded in the
nineteen eighty three yearbook, but the headline Thirteenth Amendment repealed,
(01:50):
where and I quote senior football players and cheerleaders sold
themselves as slaves to the highest bidder in the interest
of school spirit. Slave daylight last two years, then it's
wiped from history. The same thing happens with the Confederate flag,
ubiquitous on page after page in the yearbook until suddenly
it's gone. In nineteen ninety two without any mention, just erased.
(02:14):
And these yearbooks tell the story of the emergence of
mister Rebel, introduced in nineteen ninety three, a big foam
headed Confederate general who becomes the dominant symbol of the school,
replacing the Confederate flag with his own giant, mustached likeness.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
School pride gets two thumbs up from me. Mime's the
rebel man. VHS Move says that his name, like, are
we supposed to believe he was rebelman? I thought he
was supposed to be mister Rebel. This is ninety five, Okay,
so nineteen ninety five he's Rebelman at first. Nineteen ninety
eight the cover is mister Rebels. Mister Rebel is on
(02:52):
actually every single page of this so like it's called
the nineteen ninety eight Rebel Rebels.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Set the record straight. Rebel's Rebels Rebels.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
It's just like this is clearly like when they were
selling mister Rebel as a brand, seems mister Rebels stretching
with the students. Okay, that's he's everywhere, He's everywhere, Like
what's he doing? Like people say, I have too much
free time to be working on those, but seems like
this man had nothing but time and just to remind
you of his rise and fall. After a decade of
(03:23):
being mister Rebel, the man inside the suit retires in
the mascot lays dormant for a few years until he
re emerges and creates my villain origin story in two
thousand and five. Mister Rebel two point zero dominates the
school and it's yearbooks again until his ultimate retirement in
twenty seventeen. I mean, he's gone and then they just
kind of move on. That's I mean, it's kind of great,
(03:46):
he's nowhere now. As I turn the pages, they're like
and goodbye. When you look back at all of it,
paging through decade after decade, in one sitting, you see
a pattern emerge. You see the Confederate flag everywhere until
it's nowhere. You see slave Day celebrated and then completely erased.
You see mister Rebels storm the stage until eventually he's
(04:06):
gone too. In that way, these yearbooks tell one more story,
a history of half measures, of trying and failing to
overcome the racism that lies at the core of the
name Rebels by removing parts of it. Hateful bit by
hateful bit, until finally only the rebel name remains.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I was a lady rebel, Like, what does that even need?
Speaker 7 (04:26):
The Boone County Rebels will stay, the Boone County Rebels
with the image puts.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
Right here in black and white.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
The friends bigger than a flag or mask. On anytime
you're trying to mess with tradition, you get to be
ready for a serious.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Backgrash from Ninth Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes and this
is Rebel Spirit episode three half measures.
Speaker 6 (04:57):
My sophomore year, there was this sort of like shift
where we got. They said, you know, no more rebel flags,
not good, We're going to introduce this. Wait, so this
is nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Yeah, ish, okay, so like Rodney King era, just more
like a broader understandings. Yeah. Yes, this is Jenavan Lanningham,
class of nineteen ninety four. Jenna was a student at
exactly the moment that the Confederate flags were packed up
once and for all, and mister rebel was rolled in.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
And I went to Buncai High School starting in ninteen
ninety one. My freshman year, I remember rebel flags like
being at football games. I actually was involved in sports,
and we had things with rebel flags on that sort
of not really knowing or understanding what that meant at
all at age thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, but you know, the
(05:49):
adults in the room said, this is not great. We
can't have it at a sporting events or at school anymore.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
It's hard to emphasize just how abrupt the shift away
from the Confederate flag at bhs' is. It's on the
cover of yearbooks, it's featured in those already montage pages.
The cheerleaders hold it up, the color guard waves it,
people buy little flags to waive at games. The Confederate
flag was everywhere, the overarching symbol of the school, and
(06:18):
suddenly what had been the centerpiece of school spirit for
thirty years was gone. Something had to fill the void,
especially because right then all eyes were on Boone County's
football team.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
And of course we had this like really awesome football
team at the time with Sean Audit.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
She's talking about NFL legend Shawn Alexander.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
And we were just like beating teams for Lexington and
Louisville like forty five to seven.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
You know.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
During the course of that, I think I remember going
to a Preparelli at the football stadium and mister Rebel
was introduced. Somebody had bought the costume and donated the school,
I believe, and they everre somebody was in it, and
there he was clearly a Confederate like Kurnel or something.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
When he comes out, is there like excitement? Do you
feel like people are like yes? Or did anybody recognize like,
we don't have Confederate flags anymore?
Speaker 6 (07:09):
What is this man doing here? No, I think there's
this excitement.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Local Florence businessman HB. Deathridge, Really, that's his name. Deathridge
was the man both behind and inside the suit. According
to an interview with the Cincinnati Inquirer in two thousand,
he said he bought the suit because, quote before we
had the Confederate flag and I wanted to get that
out of the school. Mister Rebel was brought out for
(07:34):
school spirit and for something for the kids to rally around,
which okay, it could have been a tiger or a
penguin or a biscuit or literally anything else, but it
was a Confederate general. Go figure. This isn't the last
time you'll hear the improbable name Deathridge in this story.
When I wrote my article about changing the mascot. Back
(07:55):
in twenty fifteen, it was Hb's wife, Judy, who emerged
as Miss Rebel's staunchest and most vocal defender in a
letter she wrote to The Inquirer which begins, how can
a supposedly reputable newspaper print something so profoundly incorrect without
checking facts? The forum piece from Akila Hughes is absolutely
full of misinformation and outright lies. I'm a graduate of
(08:18):
Boone County High School and also taught there for fifteen
years beginning in the late nineteen eighties. My husband was
the original Mister Rebel. While there were Confederate flags being
used at the school in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,
he was instrumental in getting the Confederate flag removed from
the school, resulting in no backlash, and replacing it with
the blue Rebel flag. During school events, both Mister Rebel
(08:41):
and the administration confiscated Confederate symbols from students. Mister Rebel
never posed in front of a Confederate flag. My husband
fashioned the Mister Rebel mascot from the one at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas in nineteen ninety. We'll continue
Duty's letter in just a little bit. Trust me, it
gets worse. But let's just make one thing perfectly clear here.
(09:04):
Removing the iconography of the Confederacy is laudable. The Rebel
flag has no place in a high school or anywhere
else outside of a museum. But they replaced the red
and blue stars and bars with a blue and silver
version the same flag, just different colors. And they brought
in a Confederate general to rally behind. And then there's
(09:25):
the band. Wow, the van. The van has the Confederate
like stars and like the bars on their their their
little uniform that they're wearing, like yeah, like cats, yep,
And it looks like there's little Confederate flags on the hats.
Speaker 6 (09:44):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Like that looks like Conveederate marching van like for the
Civil War, the Rebel Brigade.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
When I was in high school, I remember most just
being in the marching band, which was called the Rebel Brigade.
You just got right into it, yeah, right in there
that is a literal chapter of the KKK, the Rebel Brigade.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Do you think it's a coincidence that they named that?
Oh gosh, I don't even want to guess this is
Spencer's Imbrot Class of twenty eleven.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
Reality is probably not.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But you know, when you have a Confederate general, a
different Confederate general on a you know, reared back horse
with a sword thrust in the air, I mean, come on.
So they changed it shortly after I left to the
Marching Rebels got it, which really isn't that much better.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Spencer's love of music led him away from Florence. He
went to Louisville to study music, and then to New
York for a graduate degree in orchestral conducting. But he
came home. He's now the artistic director of the Cincinnati
Men's Chorus and teaches music lessons right here in Florence.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How did we get from calling it James Dean to
it being a Confederate general. It makes no sense. It
doesn't hold water. And I think that the fact that
they keep trying to argue this is just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Are to be academics, yes, but we're not just talking
with Spencer because he's a Boone County alum. We're talking
with Spencer because he's tried what we're trying four years ago.
In twenty twenty, he started a petition to get the
Rebels name changed at Boone County once and for all.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
A big part of it was the times, and it
was all this stuff that was swirling around us.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
For anyone who forgot what twenty twenty was like, we
were in a pandemic. Donald Trump was still president, it
was an election year. The dual murders by police of
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, killed just ninety miles away
in Louisville, set off the largest racial protests since the
Civil Rights movement, and.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
It was I mean tangible.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But then a big part of it actually was also
you and that article that you had written about five
years before, and I just remember I looking at the
date of it. I must have just been graduating from
Louisville at that time, and it just had this big
impact where it was like, oh my gosh, ever thing
she's saying is spot on, it's right. I remember something
(12:04):
similar to your experiences happening, and it's just time. It's
been five years since she wrote that. I remember what
the community was saying when she wrote it online and
everything it was very contentious and were five years down
the road. Clearly there's impetus to change. Yes, let's piggyback
(12:27):
off of that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Spencer wasn't the only former BHS student to speak up
in twenty twenty. His petition sparked others to find their
voice as well.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I had seen that some students and they former students,
they were a lot younger than me, but that they
were doing a petition and I was like, I'm going
to sign this petition. And then I thought like do
people really know why they should sign this petition? Do
they understand why this is important? And I really felt
like for a lot of people, they're just ignorant of it.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
This is Bethany Bowling who graduated from Boone County in
nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And just like I was ignorant in high school, like
I was a lady rebel, like like what does that
even mean? But I had a lot of pride in
that as a basketball player, Like we had a really
good girls basketball team, and I had a lot of
pride in my school. You know, Shawn Alexander was a
senior when I was a freshman, and we cheered him
on like it was But when I reflect back on it,
(13:20):
I'm like embarrassed that I didn't even recognize the Rebel
was who he was.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Unlike Spencer who left Florence before coming back, or for
that matter, unlike me who left for good. Bethany has
lived her whole life in Northern Kentucky. After graduating, she
attended Thomas Moore University in nearby Cresview Hills, where she
played basketball while pursuing a degree in biology. Side note,
Thomas Moore's mascot used to be the Rebels as well.
It changed to the Blue Rebels in the early nineties
(13:48):
before becoming the Saints. It can happen. Bethany went on
to get her PhD in Biology and education at the
University of Cincinnati and is currently serving as the interim
dean of the College of Art and Sciences at Northern
Kentucky University. Bethany wrote an op ed for the Lexington
Herald Leader entitled It's time to change the Rebel mascot
at Boone County High School on August eleventh, twenty twenty,
(14:11):
in response to Spencer's petition.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
One of the compelling things for me, and I did
mention this in the article as well, is how we
educate our kids about slavery in this region. And you know,
I shared it on Facebook. There was very little response.
Did get an email or two that was they felt
like they were from older individuals, kind of countering some
(14:34):
of the arguments I made around the purpose of the
Civil War, which I think is a kind of it's
their classic response, exactly, sure, sure it was. So I
felt like that was, you know, and I don't even
think I responded to them, but I think a lot
of it was like let's just ignore her and like
this will go away.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Don't go away, or the racist win. We'll be right
back after a short ad break.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
When I did my petition, you know, I got it too.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, oh what did they say to you? I mean,
just for the listeners, this is like a very cute,
like blonde hair, blue adzer, Like what did you hear
about it?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So the first thing that I remember is posting in
the Boone County Neighbors Facebook page, and I just left
it there and said, hey, I'm trying to change this.
I'm sure you know many of you feel differently, but
you know, if you'd like to sign here, it is.
And the post was taken down within an hour. But
some of the comments that I read in that time
(15:34):
were about how I must be this New York liberal.
And you know, my Facebook at the time was locked
down pretty heavily, and I can remember them saying, well,
this is a fake profile, even though my name, like
if you live in Boone County, I don't know is
zimbro you know, yeah, exactly, even as far as some
people on there saying how I should be playing in traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Some of my dad's family, actually, I think all of
his siblings either changed their profile picture or something to
mister rebel.
Speaker 5 (16:04):
Or you know.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And even one of my aunts posted that she was
disgraced and ashamed that her last name was associated with
the article that came out in the inquiry about what
I was trying to do.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Wow. I was a black woman living in New York
when I wrote my article. I knew there would be backlash,
and I knew I'd be hundreds of miles away from it.
For Spencer, this was his home, these were his neighbors,
this was his family. Imagine choosing this image of the
Confederacy over your own nephew.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I was disappointed, but I wasn't really surprised. Yeah, you know,
people want to cling to what they know and to history.
And you know, these are people that haven't moved away
from the area in you know, sixty years yea. And
when you don't see other opinions, or go away to
(16:58):
school or travel the world in any capacity, it's very
easy to keep your own narrow view of what your
world is.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Absolutely, leaving this place, leaving Florence, leaving Boone County, going
to college, or going anywhere, it gives people a broader perspective.
The pushback that Spencer God, the pushback that I got
was largely from people that viewed us as outsiders for
the simple act of leaving. There's this idea that if
(17:28):
you never leave, that your love of a place is
bigger or truer. But the reality is that when you leave,
you see the world in different ways, you see yourself
in different ways. You grow, you learn, and sometimes you
come back home. But when you do, you want to
do it authentically. Were you out in high school or not?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Really? To a very select few people.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, look, we've been out of school for a minute.
But like, especially when you were there, were there any
other kids who were out that you knew?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Very few, very few being in college and learning about yourself.
You know, the other thing that you learn about that
is the intersectionality of all of these issues too.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
You know, I didn't know I was queer.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Then idea away from Florence. Jenna got married and she
and her wife adopted a son, and the thoughts turned
to moving closer to family, to moving back to Florence.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
I think there's some sort conservative backlash going on across
both anti racism efforts and with like LGBTQ plus rights.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
We met Jenna in that huddle group of progressives outside
the school board meeting where parents were voicing concerns about
the implementation of SB one fifty. And I can't help
but think of all of our struggles as the same
struggle to reckon with history, to call out aggressions, to
show people in charge that they can come join the
movement towards equality if they can ignore a few chicken
(18:56):
shit comments on Facebook, and I guess ignore the strong
feeling of the family who created mister Rebel.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The person who was mister Rebel in the costume was
a great supporter of the athletics and was a very
caring person.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
And this is an adult. As an adult, yeah, is
it possible that this is a to b death Ridge.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yes, okay, okay, So he's a big supporter of boone. Yeah.
His wife has been rebutting a lot of our articles,
Like you know, I wrote this op ed in twenty fifteen,
yours came out in twenty twenty. She is always the
first to be like, it couldn't possibly be racist my husband,
And she refers to him as mister rebel, like he's
the guy, you know, purposely brought this mascot. So can
(19:41):
you tell us a little bit about like what you
remember about him.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
He did not work for the school. He's a local businessman.
He was very supportive. He actually announced when the girls
basketball games.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
He knew us.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He supported us, you know, when we won the regional tournament,
which meant we're going to State, which has a big
deal folks in Kentucky. He had t shirts made for
us that we were going to get. He was counting
on us winning, like spending money counting on us winning
and not even like you know, I might have to
throw these shirts in the garbage. They don't wait, you
(20:15):
know what I like, he really cared about us as
student athletes. He wanted to support the program, I am
thinking like it's a caricature for him, it was like
a character, and it wasn't. And they were incredibly good people.
His wife was a teacher at the school and very
dedicated to students. And yeah, so it is a real juxtaposition.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
A little more of duty death Ridge's open letter rebuttal
to my article When questions arose in the nineteen nineties
about the rebel nickname, mister Rebel researched it and found
that the first graduating class in nineteen fifty five chose
the name Rebels because of the James Dean movie Rebel
Without a Cause. The name is sanctioned by the Civil
Rights Office. We have the letter from them framed and
(20:57):
hanging in our home. Yes, there is Rebel without a
Cause again. Yes, she calls her own husband mister Rebel.
Yes she's off handedly admitting that there have been questions
about the Rebel name dating all the way back to
the nineties. And no, we have no idea what Civil
Rights off as she's mentioning. Trust me, we've looked. Here's
(21:18):
the last part of that letter. I never witnessed any
of the false allegations Hughes represents in all my years
as a student or teacher. Rebel Pride t shirts were
worn in support of our school, not in support of
the Confederacy. To imply that this was such a reference
is beyond ludacrous. The assumption she makes about fellow students
both then and now are totally without any basis in fact.
(21:41):
For the Inquirer to publish such a racist article does
nothing to create diversity in peace, but rather fosters more
division and controversy. Racism works both ways. Judy Deathridge, Villa Hills,
by the way, Villa Hills is an area that was
owned by a few large slaveholder families and the site
of many escaping slaves crossing the river to Ohio, concentrated
(22:04):
terror over there, just mentioning it. Anyway, We reached out
repeatedly to Judy death Ridge to talk with her in
HB about all of this. She refused, rehashing the same
old story about James Dean and ended by saying, quote
Boone County High School no longer uses mister Rebel, so
there is nothing to contest and no reason to bring
it up again.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
And I can remember in twenty fifteen just almost wanting
to write into the paper and just just correct her. Yeah,
you know when you want to just be your teacher
and you just want to like it and ask for
evidence and everything. I just wanted to go to a
town on her article with a red pen. My goodness.
But I actually had her as a long term sub
when I was in like computer class at Boone and
(22:46):
I was just so astounded by what she was saying
back to you and clearly just wholesale and validating your
experience because she didn't see it right.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Look through the yearbooks in the nineteen nineties and mister
Rebel is everywhere. He's on the cover, He's posing with everyone.
One year, a drawing of mister Rebel accompanies the numbers
on every single page. Mister Rebel is ubiquitous. He is
Boone County High. Mister Rebel retires in two thousand and one,
and there's a full spread saying goodbye to him in
the two thousand and two yearbook, complete with a picture
(23:21):
of HB. Deathridge posing in the mister Rebel costume without
the head, his own tiny mustache face dwarfed by mister
Rebel's oversized gray coat. But mister Rebel doesn't stay down
for long. He's back in two thousand and five, having
traded in his coat for a basketball jersey. Piecing together
clues from the yearbooks, it seems HB is no longer
(23:41):
in the suit. Now students get the chance to wear
the big foam Confederate head at pep rallies and football games.
Mister Rebel stays the face of Boone County High School
for another dozen years. He's on shirts, he's on walls,
he's on the gym floor, until in twenty seventeen, finally
someone takes a stamp when the principal at the time,
(24:02):
Tim Schlotman, announces that mister Rebel is going away for good.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We are a very diverse student community and I didn't
feel the image of mister Rebel coincided with our global community.
Speaker 7 (24:16):
The change took place quietly last summer, not under pressure.
Tim Schlotman says it was not an issue at Boone County,
but the Rebel image no longer fit. He says, the
Rebel name still does.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
There's been no discussion of changing the name.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
To his credit, you know, Principal Schlotman did work to
change some of it, and I think he probably got
to the point where he was able to get rid
of the image, but any more than that in the
community would have just erupted.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
We reached out multiple times the Tim Schlotman and his daughters,
who I'm friends with on Facebook. We finally reached him
over text, where he graciously declined to be interviewed for
this podcast, explaining that he was retired from BHS and
his quote no longer involved in this issue.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
I actually wrote a letter to the editor to the
Sisaty Inquirer supporting that getting rid of him, because well,
I felt a little loyalty to Principal Schlopman because he
was in my track coach in the early nineties and
I've not talked to him since I've retired, but I
still feel somewhat of a appreciate a large appreciation for him. Yeah,
(25:27):
so I wrote a letter, and then I encouraged my
friends from high school that I'm still in touch with,
like can you just send him an email like telling
me he's stilling the right thing? Like this is good
because there was definitely some backlash.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Those who want to keep the rebel are very comfortable
making their voices heard. It's a uniform demographic. The people
who want it to change and can be vocal like Spencer,
Jenna and Bethany are all white. It's people like me
and people who look like me who have to think
about their safety in a place like Boone. Black on
black with a black kid in the picture. Back in
(26:05):
the Boone County yearbook from nineteen ninety, just two years
before they finally stopped flying the Confederate flag, there's a
stark reminder of just how white the student body was
at the time. The two black seniors in the entire
graduating class got their own little yearbook article. What did
these two say about their high school experience? Deborah, who
came to Boone as a junior, said, although I felt
(26:26):
out of place at first, I've met friends and everybody's
been friendly. She was pleased that her American history teacher
had dealt with black history in class. Dante felt there
had been times he was the center of attention just
because he was black. He said, white people have stereotypes
about blacks, like if you're black, you're not you're good
at sports, and that's not necessarily true. He wished that
white students understood blacks and black culture better, even though
(26:46):
they were a small part of the class and numbers.
Deborah and Dante added a lot to make the class
of nineteen ninety a memorable one two out of three
hundred and thirty. And they, oh my god. The interview
in the segment is called black on Black.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
OK.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
That's nineteen ninety. They knew what they were saying, that
is sending. The demographics of Boone County High School have
changed dramatically since the nineties, and those changes are what
led Tim Schloptmann to finally do away with mister Rebel
in twenty seventeen, and they're what leads Spencer Zimbro to
(27:31):
launch his petition in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
At the time that I was doing that petition, I
think it was like twenty four to twenty five percent
of the school was non white.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So now we're looking at one in four students who
are dealing with this racist imagery and that's significant. And
you think about how that affects learning outcomes and how
that affects the psyche of the student. It's it's reprehensible.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
So Spencer set up a petition to do right by
these kids, to finally get rid of the Rebel's name.
When we return, Spencer takes his petition to the school
rebel spirit will be right back. Spencer got almost two
thousand signatures to present to the school. Huge. Also, the
(28:17):
top comment with seven hearts is this quote. The mascot
was Goofy and Kentucky was neutral in the Civil War.
So as an institute of learning, it's actually important to
get the history of the state right, get rid of
the nickname Boone County Biscuits is great, and celebrate southern heritage.
Oh wait, that was me. Yeah, I thought biscuits was
a good idea, even during a global pandemic and social uprising.
(28:39):
And yes, I'd completely forgotten i'd written that until Spencer
brought it up. Anyway, Armed with the signatures, Spencer presented
his petition at the public comment section of Boone County's
School based Decision Making Council.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I just remember going in and seeing familiar faces. I
remember some of my teachers there, and you know, oh,
it's so good to see you, you know, so instantly
I photaled little bit more comfortable. But I also remember
that kind of making it harder, because you know, when
you're angry and you're doing all this petitioning and stuff,
You're thinking, I'm going to go and I'm going to
make all these demands and then you get there and
(29:12):
you're like, uh so I have an idea.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Yeah, like you forget that there is like a respects
there that you have for each other.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
And I just remember trying to give the most succinct
rundown of all this information I had gathered and written
in about two and a half minutes, and I think
I still had some time to spare because I just
talked so fast. Yeah, And I just remember after I
did it, they were just like, Okay, thank you. You
can leave because the comment the period public comment portion
(29:40):
is over and it's like, okay, bye.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Spencer. Never heard anything back. For Spencer, that was it.
He'd tried and it was time to move on. He
had a whole life to lead and had burned enough bridges.
And that's exactly what everyone was counting on page to
the and you can see the half measures enacted, the
moments where someone cared enough to try, and the moments
(30:06):
where more people didn't care enough to make anything stick.
That's still happening today. When we came to Florence, we
reached out to the school board, We reached out to
the journalism teacher at Boone County High. We reached out
to the principal, who was an art teacher when I
was there, and what we got was worse than no response.
We got the run around. The board told us to
(30:26):
talk to the school. The school told us to talk
to the board. Emails sent to one person would be
shot down by someone else, entirely with everyone c seed. Finally,
Barbara Bredy you remember her. She sent my number without
asking my permission to a district parent who was young
and black. She was miss June teenth. She explained to me,
repeatedly and willing, I guess, to try and explain to
(30:48):
me why I was wrong about all of this. It
did not go well, So you can't tell me who
I haven't spoken to. My internship of this podcast is
to change the massot by not spoken to you interview.
We've interviewed, but we haven't heard a single metric. I
am pulling teeth right. You are honestly the only person
who was dying on this.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
I ask, but why.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I talked with her for over two hours across two
different days, none of it on the record. Afterwards, my
producer and I were left completely perplexed as to why
we were put in touch and what the district had
hoped would come of it. So there's just a lot
to unpack, and I'm like, something something here just.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
Isn't passing the smell test. Like I don't know, because
you still don't know what what the like intention was, right?
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Is it a warning?
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I never even got to ask about the process for
these things, you know, like where they sort of are
with it, like there are meetings. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It is wild to me how talking about a school
mascot has led to so much off the record.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
The intention of this podcast was not to discredit this person,
but I'm like, if this is the black person they
feel comfortab putting in front of anyone with an inquiry
and they're not vetting it, that's crazy. While it's still
unclear what it all meant, one thing that was perfectly
clear is that making change happen in Florence is an
(32:14):
uphill battle.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
If I had to go back in time to twenty
twenty and redo that whole process, I think the first
thing that I would have done differently is start a dialogue.
I've grown since then, same And it's hard, you know,
when you're really that angry to do anything except lash out.
And I didn't know how to do anything differently. You
have to go to several site based council meetings. You
(32:37):
have to make it a prolonged effort. And I thought
that I was just going to magically, you know, slap
a petition in his face and suddenly, oh, well we
should change.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Yeah, we're not just talking about change in the abstract.
We're talking about how change really happens. It's not some
lone hero swooping in to save the day. Real change,
the kind that sticks, comes from us banning together, forming
a coalition of folks who give a damn. Now, we
got to roll up our sleeves and get to work together. Sure,
(33:07):
there will be doubters, there will be folks who will
say it can't be done, that we're wasting our time.
But you know what. Yearbooks don't just tell the stories
of a class or of an era. They tell our
own stories too. Page through the two thousand and five
Boone County High School yearbook, and there I am staring
out from my senior picture, looking impossibly young. There I
(33:30):
am posing on the jim bleachers, mister Rebel on the
wall looming over us, with the forensics team, the concert choir,
and yes, the yearbook staff looking over the looping cursive
notes today, nearly twenty years later. Some are laugh out loud, funny,
some are heartbreaking. All of them transport me back to
when I was leaving BCHS, getting ready to embark on
(33:51):
a life that led me away from Florence until now
it's brought me back. And in the yearbook near the end,
there's one note that stands out among them arrest. Two
words never change. Looking at the girl I was then
and the woman I am now, I haven't, but looking
at decades of yearbooks in one sitting, it's clear how
much a BHS has and now it's time for the
(34:14):
Boone County Rebels to change too. Rebel Spirit is a
production of Ninth 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
(34:37):
by Josie A.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Zahm Our.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Assistant editor is Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun,
Sound design and mixing by Josia zahmb 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 dip Sing. Additional research
(35:01):
support from Janice Dillard. 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, Hillary Delaney.
Speaker 6 (35:14):
And Leslie Chambers.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
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 Rebel Spirit Podcast at gmail dot com.
We would love to hear from you.
My own black roller has gone on overlanding Redrow, I don't.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Know, I know gone Ninth Planet Audio cat com We're overlanding, You're.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
No laning over.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
In the late eighties early nineties, they changed the yearbook
from the Highways Yeah.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
Back to Rebel eight Rebel, and the first page in
color says, go rebels. There's a Confederate flag. I love
the rebels. People holding the sign that says rebels. We're
back at the Burlington branch of the Boone County Library
looking through my high school's yearbooks from the nineteen seventies, eighties,
and nineties. Wild Okay, I'm seeing a black kape the
hides up. I love that. The cool thing is like
(00:42):
you do start to see like one black person every
now and then. Tim Travis always allowed to sit next
to a blonde white girl.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
This is crazy.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Open a yearbook and they tell you stories. Stories of
hairstyles so big in the nineteen eighties, and of fads
that come and go over the years. Stories of the
dreams that everyone has as they prepare to exit the
liminal space between childhood and adulthood. It's all there in
the pages of the Boone County High School yearbooks as
innocent and hilarious as any yearbook on the planet. But
(01:09):
these tell you another story too. I want to look
at nineteen ninety and the Confederate flags on the front.
Now they have Boone County apparel with the Confederate flag
on it that they're selling in the Spirit shop, And
this is nineteen ninety. These yearbooks tell a story of
decades of Confederate imagery, of the stars and bars flying
(01:30):
over football games, held by cheerleaders, sold in the spirit shop.
They tell the story of a short lived Confederate character
in the nineteen seventies named Buford Bugler, who was there
until he wasn't. They tell the story of and I'm
not kidding here, Slave Day, which was heralded in the
nineteen eighty three yearbook, but the headline Thirteenth Amendment repealed,
(01:50):
where and I quote senior football players and cheerleaders sold
themselves as slaves to the highest bidder in the interest
of school spirit. Slave daylight last two years, then it's
wiped from history. The same thing happens with the Confederate flag,
ubiquitous on page after page in the yearbook until suddenly
it's gone. In nineteen ninety two without any mention, just erased.
(02:14):
And these yearbooks tell the story of the emergence of
mister Rebel, introduced in nineteen ninety three, a big foam
headed Confederate general who becomes the dominant symbol of the school,
replacing the Confederate flag with his own giant, mustached likeness.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
School pride gets two thumbs up from me. Mime's the
rebel man. VHS Move says that his name, like, are
we supposed to believe he was rebelman? I thought he
was supposed to be mister Rebel. This is ninety five, Okay,
so nineteen ninety five he's Rebelman at first. Nineteen ninety
eight the cover is mister Rebels. Mister Rebel is on
(02:52):
actually every single page of this so like it's called
the nineteen ninety eight Rebel Rebels.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
Set the record straight. Rebel's Rebels Rebels.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
It's just like this is clearly like when they were
selling mister Rebel as a brand, seems mister Rebels stretching
with the students. Okay, that's he's everywhere, He's everywhere, Like
what's he doing? Like people say, I have too much
free time to be working on those, but seems like
this man had nothing but time and just to remind
you of his rise and fall. After a decade of
(03:23):
being mister Rebel, the man inside the suit retires in
the mascot lays dormant for a few years until he
re emerges and creates my villain origin story in two
thousand and five. Mister Rebel two point zero dominates the
school and it's yearbooks again until his ultimate retirement in
twenty seventeen. I mean, he's gone and then they just
kind of move on. That's I mean, it's kind of great,
(03:46):
he's nowhere now. As I turn the pages, they're like
and goodbye. When you look back at all of it,
paging through decade after decade, in one sitting, you see
a pattern emerge. You see the Confederate flag everywhere until
it's nowhere. You see slave Day celebrated and then completely erased.
You see mister Rebels storm the stage until eventually he's
(04:06):
gone too. In that way, these yearbooks tell one more story,
a history of half measures, of trying and failing to
overcome the racism that lies at the core of the
name Rebels by removing parts of it. Hateful bit by
hateful bit, until finally only the rebel name remains.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
I was a lady rebel, Like, what does that even need?
Speaker 7 (04:26):
The Boone County Rebels will stay, the Boone County Rebels
with the image puts.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
Right here in black and white.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
The friends bigger than a flag or mask. On anytime
you're trying to mess with tradition, you get to be
ready for a serious.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
Backgrash from Ninth Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes and this
is Rebel Spirit episode three half measures.
Speaker 6 (04:57):
My sophomore year, there was this sort of like shift
where we got. They said, you know, no more rebel flags,
not good, We're going to introduce this. Wait, so this
is nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Yeah, ish, okay, so like Rodney King era, just more
like a broader understandings. Yeah. Yes, this is Jenavan Lanningham,
class of nineteen ninety four. Jenna was a student at
exactly the moment that the Confederate flags were packed up
once and for all, and mister rebel was rolled in.
Speaker 6 (05:28):
And I went to Buncai High School starting in ninteen
ninety one. My freshman year, I remember rebel flags like
being at football games. I actually was involved in sports,
and we had things with rebel flags on that sort
of not really knowing or understanding what that meant at
all at age thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, but you know, the
(05:49):
adults in the room said, this is not great. We
can't have it at a sporting events or at school anymore.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
It's hard to emphasize just how abrupt the shift away
from the Confederate flag at bhs' is. It's on the
cover of yearbooks, it's featured in those already montage pages.
The cheerleaders hold it up, the color guard waves it,
people buy little flags to waive at games. The Confederate
flag was everywhere, the overarching symbol of the school, and
(06:18):
suddenly what had been the centerpiece of school spirit for
thirty years was gone. Something had to fill the void,
especially because right then all eyes were on Boone County's
football team.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
And of course we had this like really awesome football
team at the time with Sean Audit.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
She's talking about NFL legend Shawn Alexander.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
And we were just like beating teams for Lexington and
Louisville like forty five to seven.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
You know.
Speaker 6 (06:43):
During the course of that, I think I remember going
to a Preparelli at the football stadium and mister Rebel
was introduced. Somebody had bought the costume and donated the school,
I believe, and they everre somebody was in it, and
there he was clearly a Confederate like Kurnel or something.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
When he comes out, is there like excitement? Do you
feel like people are like yes? Or did anybody recognize like,
we don't have Confederate flags anymore?
Speaker 6 (07:09):
What is this man doing here? No, I think there's
this excitement.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Local Florence businessman HB. Deathridge, Really, that's his name. Deathridge
was the man both behind and inside the suit. According
to an interview with the Cincinnati Inquirer in two thousand,
he said he bought the suit because, quote before we
had the Confederate flag and I wanted to get that
out of the school. Mister Rebel was brought out for
(07:34):
school spirit and for something for the kids to rally around,
which okay, it could have been a tiger or a
penguin or a biscuit or literally anything else, but it
was a Confederate general. Go figure. This isn't the last
time you'll hear the improbable name Deathridge in this story.
When I wrote my article about changing the mascot. Back
(07:55):
in twenty fifteen, it was Hb's wife, Judy, who emerged
as Miss Rebel's staunchest and most vocal defender in a
letter she wrote to The Inquirer which begins, how can
a supposedly reputable newspaper print something so profoundly incorrect without
checking facts? The forum piece from Akila Hughes is absolutely
full of misinformation and outright lies. I'm a graduate of
(08:18):
Boone County High School and also taught there for fifteen
years beginning in the late nineteen eighties. My husband was
the original Mister Rebel. While there were Confederate flags being
used at the school in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,
he was instrumental in getting the Confederate flag removed from
the school, resulting in no backlash, and replacing it with
the blue Rebel flag. During school events, both Mister Rebel
(08:41):
and the administration confiscated Confederate symbols from students. Mister Rebel
never posed in front of a Confederate flag. My husband
fashioned the Mister Rebel mascot from the one at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas in nineteen ninety. We'll continue
Duty's letter in just a little bit. Trust me, it
gets worse. But let's just make one thing perfectly clear here.
(09:04):
Removing the iconography of the Confederacy is laudable. The Rebel
flag has no place in a high school or anywhere
else outside of a museum. But they replaced the red
and blue stars and bars with a blue and silver
version the same flag, just different colors. And they brought
in a Confederate general to rally behind. And then there's
(09:25):
the band. Wow, the van. The van has the Confederate
like stars and like the bars on their their their
little uniform that they're wearing, like yeah, like cats, yep,
And it looks like there's little Confederate flags on the hats.
Speaker 6 (09:44):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (09:45):
Like that looks like Conveederate marching van like for the
Civil War, the Rebel Brigade.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
When I was in high school, I remember most just
being in the marching band, which was called the Rebel Brigade.
You just got right into it, yeah, right in there
that is a literal chapter of the KKK, the Rebel Brigade.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
Do you think it's a coincidence that they named that?
Oh gosh, I don't even want to guess this is
Spencer's Imbrot Class of twenty eleven.
Speaker 6 (10:12):
Reality is probably not.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.
But you know, when you have a Confederate general, a
different Confederate general on a you know, reared back horse
with a sword thrust in the air, I mean, come on.
So they changed it shortly after I left to the
Marching Rebels got it, which really isn't that much better.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Spencer's love of music led him away from Florence. He
went to Louisville to study music, and then to New
York for a graduate degree in orchestral conducting. But he
came home. He's now the artistic director of the Cincinnati
Men's Chorus and teaches music lessons right here in Florence.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
How did we get from calling it James Dean to
it being a Confederate general. It makes no sense. It
doesn't hold water. And I think that the fact that
they keep trying to argue this is just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Are to be academics, yes, but we're not just talking
with Spencer because he's a Boone County alum. We're talking
with Spencer because he's tried what we're trying four years ago.
In twenty twenty, he started a petition to get the
Rebels name changed at Boone County once and for all.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
A big part of it was the times, and it
was all this stuff that was swirling around us.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
For anyone who forgot what twenty twenty was like, we
were in a pandemic. Donald Trump was still president, it
was an election year. The dual murders by police of
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, killed just ninety miles away
in Louisville, set off the largest racial protests since the
Civil Rights movement, and.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
It was I mean tangible.
Speaker 5 (11:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But then a big part of it actually was also
you and that article that you had written about five
years before, and I just remember I looking at the
date of it. I must have just been graduating from
Louisville at that time, and it just had this big
impact where it was like, oh my gosh, ever thing
she's saying is spot on, it's right. I remember something
(12:04):
similar to your experiences happening, and it's just time. It's
been five years since she wrote that. I remember what
the community was saying when she wrote it online and
everything it was very contentious and were five years down
the road. Clearly there's impetus to change. Yes, let's piggyback
(12:27):
off of that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
Spencer wasn't the only former BHS student to speak up
in twenty twenty. His petition sparked others to find their
voice as well.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
I had seen that some students and they former students,
they were a lot younger than me, but that they
were doing a petition and I was like, I'm going
to sign this petition. And then I thought like do
people really know why they should sign this petition? Do
they understand why this is important? And I really felt
like for a lot of people, they're just ignorant of it.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
This is Bethany Bowling who graduated from Boone County in
nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And just like I was ignorant in high school, like
I was a lady rebel, like like what does that
even mean? But I had a lot of pride in
that as a basketball player, Like we had a really
good girls basketball team, and I had a lot of
pride in my school. You know, Shawn Alexander was a
senior when I was a freshman, and we cheered him
on like it was But when I reflect back on it,
(13:20):
I'm like embarrassed that I didn't even recognize the Rebel
was who he was.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Unlike Spencer who left Florence before coming back, or for
that matter, unlike me who left for good. Bethany has
lived her whole life in Northern Kentucky. After graduating, she
attended Thomas Moore University in nearby Cresview Hills, where she
played basketball while pursuing a degree in biology. Side note,
Thomas Moore's mascot used to be the Rebels as well.
It changed to the Blue Rebels in the early nineties
(13:48):
before becoming the Saints. It can happen. Bethany went on
to get her PhD in Biology and education at the
University of Cincinnati and is currently serving as the interim
dean of the College of Art and Sciences at Northern
Kentucky University. Bethany wrote an op ed for the Lexington
Herald Leader entitled It's time to change the Rebel mascot
at Boone County High School on August eleventh, twenty twenty,
(14:11):
in response to Spencer's petition.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
One of the compelling things for me, and I did
mention this in the article as well, is how we
educate our kids about slavery in this region. And you know,
I shared it on Facebook. There was very little response.
Did get an email or two that was they felt
like they were from older individuals, kind of countering some
(14:34):
of the arguments I made around the purpose of the
Civil War, which I think is a kind of it's
their classic response, exactly, sure, sure it was. So I
felt like that was, you know, and I don't even
think I responded to them, but I think a lot
of it was like let's just ignore her and like
this will go away.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Don't go away, or the racist win. We'll be right
back after a short ad break.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
When I did my petition, you know, I got it too.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, oh what did they say to you? I mean,
just for the listeners, this is like a very cute,
like blonde hair, blue adzer, Like what did you hear
about it?
Speaker 3 (15:13):
So the first thing that I remember is posting in
the Boone County Neighbors Facebook page, and I just left
it there and said, hey, I'm trying to change this.
I'm sure you know many of you feel differently, but
you know, if you'd like to sign here, it is.
And the post was taken down within an hour. But
some of the comments that I read in that time
(15:34):
were about how I must be this New York liberal.
And you know, my Facebook at the time was locked
down pretty heavily, and I can remember them saying, well,
this is a fake profile, even though my name, like
if you live in Boone County, I don't know is
zimbro you know, yeah, exactly, even as far as some
people on there saying how I should be playing in traffic.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Some of my dad's family, actually, I think all of
his siblings either changed their profile picture or something to
mister rebel.
Speaker 5 (16:04):
Or you know.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And even one of my aunts posted that she was
disgraced and ashamed that her last name was associated with
the article that came out in the inquiry about what
I was trying to do.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Wow. I was a black woman living in New York
when I wrote my article. I knew there would be backlash,
and I knew I'd be hundreds of miles away from it.
For Spencer, this was his home, these were his neighbors,
this was his family. Imagine choosing this image of the
Confederacy over your own nephew.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I was disappointed, but I wasn't really surprised. Yeah, you know,
people want to cling to what they know and to history.
And you know, these are people that haven't moved away
from the area in you know, sixty years yea. And
when you don't see other opinions, or go away to
(16:58):
school or travel the world in any capacity, it's very
easy to keep your own narrow view of what your
world is.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Absolutely, leaving this place, leaving Florence, leaving Boone County, going
to college, or going anywhere, it gives people a broader perspective.
The pushback that Spencer God, the pushback that I got
was largely from people that viewed us as outsiders for
the simple act of leaving. There's this idea that if
(17:28):
you never leave, that your love of a place is
bigger or truer. But the reality is that when you leave,
you see the world in different ways, you see yourself
in different ways. You grow, you learn, and sometimes you
come back home. But when you do, you want to
do it authentically. Were you out in high school or not?
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Really? To a very select few people.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Yeah, look, we've been out of school for a minute.
But like, especially when you were there, were there any
other kids who were out that you knew?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Very few, very few being in college and learning about yourself.
You know, the other thing that you learn about that
is the intersectionality of all of these issues too.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
You know, I didn't know I was queer.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Then idea away from Florence. Jenna got married and she
and her wife adopted a son, and the thoughts turned
to moving closer to family, to moving back to Florence.
Speaker 6 (18:24):
I think there's some sort conservative backlash going on across
both anti racism efforts and with like LGBTQ plus rights.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
We met Jenna in that huddle group of progressives outside
the school board meeting where parents were voicing concerns about
the implementation of SB one fifty. And I can't help
but think of all of our struggles as the same
struggle to reckon with history, to call out aggressions, to
show people in charge that they can come join the
movement towards equality if they can ignore a few chicken
(18:56):
shit comments on Facebook, and I guess ignore the strong
feeling of the family who created mister Rebel.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
The person who was mister Rebel in the costume was
a great supporter of the athletics and was a very
caring person.
Speaker 6 (19:12):
And this is an adult. As an adult, yeah, is
it possible that this is a to b death Ridge.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yes, okay, okay, So he's a big supporter of boone. Yeah.
His wife has been rebutting a lot of our articles,
Like you know, I wrote this op ed in twenty fifteen,
yours came out in twenty twenty. She is always the
first to be like, it couldn't possibly be racist my husband,
And she refers to him as mister rebel, like he's
the guy, you know, purposely brought this mascot. So can
(19:41):
you tell us a little bit about like what you
remember about him.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
He did not work for the school. He's a local businessman.
He was very supportive. He actually announced when the girls
basketball games.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
He knew us.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
He supported us, you know, when we won the regional tournament,
which meant we're going to State, which has a big
deal folks in Kentucky. He had t shirts made for
us that we were going to get. He was counting
on us winning, like spending money counting on us winning
and not even like you know, I might have to
throw these shirts in the garbage. They don't wait, you
(20:15):
know what I like, he really cared about us as
student athletes. He wanted to support the program, I am
thinking like it's a caricature for him, it was like
a character, and it wasn't. And they were incredibly good people.
His wife was a teacher at the school and very
dedicated to students. And yeah, so it is a real juxtaposition.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
A little more of duty death Ridge's open letter rebuttal
to my article When questions arose in the nineteen nineties
about the rebel nickname, mister Rebel researched it and found
that the first graduating class in nineteen fifty five chose
the name Rebels because of the James Dean movie Rebel
Without a Cause. The name is sanctioned by the Civil
Rights Office. We have the letter from them framed and
(20:57):
hanging in our home. Yes, there is Rebel without a
Cause again. Yes, she calls her own husband mister Rebel.
Yes she's off handedly admitting that there have been questions
about the Rebel name dating all the way back to
the nineties. And no, we have no idea what Civil
Rights off as she's mentioning. Trust me, we've looked. Here's
(21:18):
the last part of that letter. I never witnessed any
of the false allegations Hughes represents in all my years
as a student or teacher. Rebel Pride t shirts were
worn in support of our school, not in support of
the Confederacy. To imply that this was such a reference
is beyond ludacrous. The assumption she makes about fellow students
both then and now are totally without any basis in fact.
(21:41):
For the Inquirer to publish such a racist article does
nothing to create diversity in peace, but rather fosters more
division and controversy. Racism works both ways. Judy Deathridge, Villa Hills,
by the way, Villa Hills is an area that was
owned by a few large slaveholder families and the site
of many escaping slaves crossing the river to Ohio, concentrated
(22:04):
terror over there, just mentioning it. Anyway, We reached out
repeatedly to Judy death Ridge to talk with her in
HB about all of this. She refused, rehashing the same
old story about James Dean and ended by saying, quote
Boone County High School no longer uses mister Rebel, so
there is nothing to contest and no reason to bring
it up again.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
And I can remember in twenty fifteen just almost wanting
to write into the paper and just just correct her. Yeah,
you know when you want to just be your teacher
and you just want to like it and ask for
evidence and everything. I just wanted to go to a
town on her article with a red pen. My goodness.
But I actually had her as a long term sub
when I was in like computer class at Boone and
(22:46):
I was just so astounded by what she was saying
back to you and clearly just wholesale and validating your
experience because she didn't see it right.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Look through the yearbooks in the nineteen nineties and mister
Rebel is everywhere. He's on the cover, He's posing with everyone.
One year, a drawing of mister Rebel accompanies the numbers
on every single page. Mister Rebel is ubiquitous. He is
Boone County High. Mister Rebel retires in two thousand and one,
and there's a full spread saying goodbye to him in
the two thousand and two yearbook, complete with a picture
(23:21):
of HB. Deathridge posing in the mister Rebel costume without
the head, his own tiny mustache face dwarfed by mister
Rebel's oversized gray coat. But mister Rebel doesn't stay down
for long. He's back in two thousand and five, having
traded in his coat for a basketball jersey. Piecing together
clues from the yearbooks, it seems HB is no longer
(23:41):
in the suit. Now students get the chance to wear
the big foam Confederate head at pep rallies and football games.
Mister Rebel stays the face of Boone County High School
for another dozen years. He's on shirts, he's on walls,
he's on the gym floor, until in twenty seventeen, finally
someone takes a stamp when the principal at the time,
(24:02):
Tim Schlotman, announces that mister Rebel is going away for good.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
We are a very diverse student community and I didn't
feel the image of mister Rebel coincided with our global community.
Speaker 7 (24:16):
The change took place quietly last summer, not under pressure.
Tim Schlotman says it was not an issue at Boone County,
but the Rebel image no longer fit. He says, the
Rebel name still does.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
There's been no discussion of changing the name.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
To his credit, you know, Principal Schlotman did work to
change some of it, and I think he probably got
to the point where he was able to get rid
of the image, but any more than that in the
community would have just erupted.
Speaker 4 (24:47):
We reached out multiple times the Tim Schlotman and his daughters,
who I'm friends with on Facebook. We finally reached him
over text, where he graciously declined to be interviewed for
this podcast, explaining that he was retired from BHS and
his quote no longer involved in this issue.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
I actually wrote a letter to the editor to the
Sisaty Inquirer supporting that getting rid of him, because well,
I felt a little loyalty to Principal Schlopman because he
was in my track coach in the early nineties and
I've not talked to him since I've retired, but I
still feel somewhat of a appreciate a large appreciation for him. Yeah,
(25:27):
so I wrote a letter, and then I encouraged my
friends from high school that I'm still in touch with,
like can you just send him an email like telling
me he's stilling the right thing? Like this is good
because there was definitely some backlash.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Those who want to keep the rebel are very comfortable
making their voices heard. It's a uniform demographic. The people
who want it to change and can be vocal like Spencer,
Jenna and Bethany are all white. It's people like me
and people who look like me who have to think
about their safety in a place like Boone. Black on
black with a black kid in the picture. Back in
(26:05):
the Boone County yearbook from nineteen ninety, just two years
before they finally stopped flying the Confederate flag, there's a
stark reminder of just how white the student body was
at the time. The two black seniors in the entire
graduating class got their own little yearbook article. What did
these two say about their high school experience? Deborah, who
came to Boone as a junior, said, although I felt
(26:26):
out of place at first, I've met friends and everybody's
been friendly. She was pleased that her American history teacher
had dealt with black history in class. Dante felt there
had been times he was the center of attention just
because he was black. He said, white people have stereotypes
about blacks, like if you're black, you're not you're good
at sports, and that's not necessarily true. He wished that
white students understood blacks and black culture better, even though
(26:46):
they were a small part of the class and numbers.
Deborah and Dante added a lot to make the class
of nineteen ninety a memorable one two out of three
hundred and thirty. And they, oh my god. The interview
in the segment is called black on Black.
Speaker 5 (27:06):
OK.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
That's nineteen ninety. They knew what they were saying, that
is sending. The demographics of Boone County High School have
changed dramatically since the nineties, and those changes are what
led Tim Schloptmann to finally do away with mister Rebel
in twenty seventeen, and they're what leads Spencer Zimbro to
(27:31):
launch his petition in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
At the time that I was doing that petition, I
think it was like twenty four to twenty five percent
of the school was non white.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
So now we're looking at one in four students who
are dealing with this racist imagery and that's significant. And
you think about how that affects learning outcomes and how
that affects the psyche of the student. It's it's reprehensible.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
So Spencer set up a petition to do right by
these kids, to finally get rid of the Rebel's name.
When we return, Spencer takes his petition to the school
rebel spirit will be right back. Spencer got almost two
thousand signatures to present to the school. Huge. Also, the
(28:17):
top comment with seven hearts is this quote. The mascot
was Goofy and Kentucky was neutral in the Civil War.
So as an institute of learning, it's actually important to
get the history of the state right, get rid of
the nickname Boone County Biscuits is great, and celebrate southern heritage.
Oh wait, that was me. Yeah, I thought biscuits was
a good idea, even during a global pandemic and social uprising.
(28:39):
And yes, I'd completely forgotten i'd written that until Spencer
brought it up. Anyway, Armed with the signatures, Spencer presented
his petition at the public comment section of Boone County's
School based Decision Making Council.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I just remember going in and seeing familiar faces. I
remember some of my teachers there, and you know, oh,
it's so good to see you, you know, so instantly
I photaled little bit more comfortable. But I also remember
that kind of making it harder, because you know, when
you're angry and you're doing all this petitioning and stuff,
You're thinking, I'm going to go and I'm going to
make all these demands and then you get there and
(29:12):
you're like, uh so I have an idea.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Yeah, like you forget that there is like a respects
there that you have for each other.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
And I just remember trying to give the most succinct
rundown of all this information I had gathered and written
in about two and a half minutes, and I think
I still had some time to spare because I just
talked so fast. Yeah, And I just remember after I
did it, they were just like, Okay, thank you. You
can leave because the comment the period public comment portion
(29:40):
is over and it's like, okay, bye.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Spencer. Never heard anything back. For Spencer, that was it.
He'd tried and it was time to move on. He
had a whole life to lead and had burned enough bridges.
And that's exactly what everyone was counting on page to
the and you can see the half measures enacted, the
moments where someone cared enough to try, and the moments
(30:06):
where more people didn't care enough to make anything stick.
That's still happening today. When we came to Florence, we
reached out to the school board, We reached out to
the journalism teacher at Boone County High. We reached out
to the principal, who was an art teacher when I
was there, and what we got was worse than no response.
We got the run around. The board told us to
(30:26):
talk to the school. The school told us to talk
to the board. Emails sent to one person would be
shot down by someone else, entirely with everyone c seed. Finally,
Barbara Bredy you remember her. She sent my number without
asking my permission to a district parent who was young
and black. She was miss June teenth. She explained to me,
repeatedly and willing, I guess, to try and explain to
(30:48):
me why I was wrong about all of this. It
did not go well, So you can't tell me who
I haven't spoken to. My internship of this podcast is
to change the massot by not spoken to you interview.
We've interviewed, but we haven't heard a single metric. I
am pulling teeth right. You are honestly the only person
who was dying on this.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
I ask, but why.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I talked with her for over two hours across two
different days, none of it on the record. Afterwards, my
producer and I were left completely perplexed as to why
we were put in touch and what the district had
hoped would come of it. So there's just a lot
to unpack, and I'm like, something something here just.
Speaker 6 (31:30):
Isn't passing the smell test. Like I don't know, because
you still don't know what what the like intention was, right?
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Is it a warning?
Speaker 4 (31:39):
I never even got to ask about the process for
these things, you know, like where they sort of are
with it, like there are meetings. Definitely.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It is wild to me how talking about a school
mascot has led to so much off the record.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
The intention of this podcast was not to discredit this person,
but I'm like, if this is the black person they
feel comfortab putting in front of anyone with an inquiry
and they're not vetting it, that's crazy. While it's still
unclear what it all meant, one thing that was perfectly
clear is that making change happen in Florence is an
(32:14):
uphill battle.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
If I had to go back in time to twenty
twenty and redo that whole process, I think the first
thing that I would have done differently is start a dialogue.
I've grown since then, same And it's hard, you know,
when you're really that angry to do anything except lash out.
And I didn't know how to do anything differently. You
have to go to several site based council meetings. You
(32:37):
have to make it a prolonged effort. And I thought
that I was just going to magically, you know, slap
a petition in his face and suddenly, oh, well we
should change.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Yeah, we're not just talking about change in the abstract.
We're talking about how change really happens. It's not some
lone hero swooping in to save the day. Real change,
the kind that sticks, comes from us banning together, forming
a coalition of folks who give a damn. Now, we
got to roll up our sleeves and get to work together. Sure,
(33:07):
there will be doubters, there will be folks who will
say it can't be done, that we're wasting our time.
But you know what. Yearbooks don't just tell the stories
of a class or of an era. They tell our
own stories too. Page through the two thousand and five
Boone County High School yearbook, and there I am staring
out from my senior picture, looking impossibly young. There I
(33:30):
am posing on the jim bleachers, mister Rebel on the
wall looming over us, with the forensics team, the concert choir,
and yes, the yearbook staff looking over the looping cursive
notes today, nearly twenty years later. Some are laugh out loud, funny,
some are heartbreaking. All of them transport me back to
when I was leaving BCHS, getting ready to embark on
(33:51):
a life that led me away from Florence until now
it's brought me back. And in the yearbook near the end,
there's one note that stands out among them arrest. Two
words never change. Looking at the girl I was then
and the woman I am now, I haven't, but looking
at decades of yearbooks in one sitting, it's clear how
much a BHS has and now it's time for the
(34:14):
Boone County Rebels to change too. Rebel Spirit is a
production of Ninth 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
(34:37):
by Josie A.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
Zahm Our.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
Assistant editor is Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun,
Sound design and mixing by Josia zahmb 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 dip Sing. Additional research
(35:01):
support from Janice Dillard. 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, Hillary Delaney.
Speaker 6 (35:14):
And Leslie Chambers.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
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 Rebel Spirit Podcast at gmail dot com.
We would love to hear from you.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.