On May 31, 2020 the Henrico County Public Schools Superintendent, Amy Cashwell voiced her “rejection of the unequivocal hate, bigotry and violence” seen in the media over the past several weeks against Black bodies. In acknowledging the diverse population of students in this district, she commits to “support our school community.”

For years, however, this district has participated in a debate about the propriety of Douglas Southall Freeman High School’s infamous mascot, the Rebel. For years, we have been thinking about it wrong.

In reality, the Rebel (and the Rebel Man) is just that, a mascot: a symbol and a symptom of deeper issues in the institution it represents.  

While Douglas Southall Freeman accomplished many things, one lasting legacy is his contribution to Lost-Cause Ideology. The Lost-Cause was a movement in the South that began at the turn of the 20th century. This propaganda movement began as a effort to minimize the relationship between the Civil War and slavery. Freeman painted Lee and the confederate soldiers as courageous and valiant men while warping and erasing the role of slavery and its harm and violence towards Black people.

The school was founded in 1954, the same year as Brown v. Board, and had a 100% white popultation. The Rebel Soldier and the commitment to the Lost-Cause through the display of Confederate flags and the singing of “Dixie” rooted the school in this ideology. Up until very recently, the middle school that funnels directly into Freeman High School was even named after a segregationist Senator Harry F. Bryd. It is clear that Henrico Public Schools used to be a breeding ground for racism and inequality.  

Though contexts have changed, Freeman’s ideology and the violence that stems from it still exist within the halls of Freeman High School.

This school suffers from rampant second-generation segregation in which higher-level tracks such as honors and AP courses serve as an entity that, with few exceptions, separates students by race. Curricula still overwhelmingly lack narratives and histories that center and celebrate Blackness within the school system. This is the same type of history Douglas Freeman wrote, and it is inadequate for an equitable and just education system.

The centering of white perspectives in the documentation of history and current events still exists within this institution. Not only are the newspaper and the year book expensive and inaccessible to all students, but their staffs are disproportionately white. Still today, the news and histories written in this institution are by and for the affluent, white demographic who will never be able fully or accurately grasp the Black experience.

Many Black students at Freeman don’t have the comfort of walking into honors or AP courses and seeing others that look like them. Most of Freeman’s students of color were in “college prep” classes which received fewer resources and retained an emphasis on passing rather than excelling. This is not a reflection of the talent or intellect of the students in these classes, but a representation of how the system has failed its students.

For Black students in white-dominated classes, the transition to eating lunch in the cafeteria is shocking as when they finally see others of their race, they are separated from the people they are in class with. The two cafeteria rooms clearly divide affluent white students and students of color. The room white students generally occupied had nicer chairs and other facilities. White students routinely referred to the opposite room as the “ghettoteria.” These experiences ostracize Black students from their white-classmates when some were openly racist and discriminatory while the rest were complicit.

Many in the past called for the recontextualization of the word “Rebels,” but Charlottesville based activist Zyahna Bryant states, “I do not believe that, in most cases, simply recontextualizing racist symbols within their current spaces is an adequate solution.”

At Freeman, it is routine to hear groups of white students chant “Rebel Born Rebel Bred Rebel till the day I’m dead,” and sport spirit wear inscribed with “Rebel Yell, '' at Friday night football games. This is violence. These chants stem from Confederate war chants and cannot be recontextualized.

The Lost-Cause narratives were an attempt to recontextualize the Civil War and those who fought in it. This recontextualization has allowed individuals to overlook violent nuances of history, and the ability to overlook these nuances comes with privilege. Black students do not hold that privilege.

The lack of this privilege for black students routinely leads to dilemmas within the walls of Freeman High School. One of the more common and concerning dilemmas is the desire of black students to wear school paraphernalia, only to be met with the unnecessary decision to “proudly” sport the word “Rebels” across their chest. In doing this, students often express that their existence is contradicted. How can they proudly support a school that, from its inception, was meant as a weapon against them? The decision to wear school paraphernalia should never cause a sense of discomfort for any student, especially not because of their race, culture or heritage. However, this is the current case at Freeman.

One cannot advocate, as Amy Cashwell states, for “diverse educational, social, and civic learning experiences that inspire and empower” all students without first dismantling racist and oppressive symbols.

One cannot simultaneously promote diverse and empowering learning experiences while also celebrating a historian whose work built narratives that center white perspectives and erase others.

We are not looking to erase history. We are calling to re-examine whose history has been written and which narratives and perspectives have been intentionally and systemically left out. We are calling for a more inclusive and empowering environment for all students.

Black Lives Matter,

Victoria Getter, Class of 2019

Kennedy Mackey, Class of 2018

Mary Katherine West, Class of 2018

Sarandon Elliot, Class of 2017