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Speaker 1: My own black collars going.

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Speaker 2: On overlanding I.

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Speaker 1: Ninth Planet Audio dot com. We're over landing, You're no work.

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Speaker 3: And starting my journey to change the BHS mascot. I

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Speaker 3: figured I should go right to the source and reach

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Speaker 3: out directly to the school.

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Speaker 4: And then you got in touch with the school board.

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Speaker 3: Yes, so okay, So I couldn't wait. I sent the

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Speaker 3: videmail to the head of the school board and I

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Speaker 3: can just read it. Yeah, I said, Hello, is Bird.

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Speaker 3: I'm Akhil Hughes, a writer, comedian, and podcast host who was,

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Speaker 3: fun fact, the first student representative to the Board of

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Speaker 3: Education in Kentucky history. I graduated from Buncuta High School

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Speaker 3: in two thousand and five. I'm writing you because I'm

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Speaker 3: doing a podcast about schools in the South and Florence's

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Speaker 3: very cool history. We also want to talk about biscuits.

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Speaker 3: I'm having trouble finding updated contact information for anyone at

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Speaker 3: BCHS who can help, and unfortunately Missus Black, the principal

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Speaker 3: and also my our fine arts teacher, hasn't been able

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Speaker 3: to assist us. Is there a time that would be

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Speaker 3: good to visit the play. I even had an end

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Speaker 3: with the principal Stacy Black who used to be one

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Speaker 3: of my teachers back in the early odds. So surely

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Speaker 3: she'd be willing to talk with me and realize that

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Speaker 3: this is a change the school desperately needed. Right, Maybe

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Speaker 3: the podcast ends here, and all I have to do

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Speaker 3: is make her aware of the Raci's mascot and she'll

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Speaker 3: be a leader and make the change. Listener, I was

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Speaker 3: so wrong. Long story short, All of my attempts to

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Speaker 3: connect and speak with someone who actually worked at BCHS

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Speaker 3: or someone on the school board, literally anyone involved in

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Speaker 3: education at all, were pushed off to a woman named

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Speaker 3: Barbara Brady, the Schools and Community Relations coordinator, basically the

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Speaker 3: PR woman for the school district. And so yeah, Barbara

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Speaker 3: has uncceed everyone and essentially is just like have you

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Speaker 3: seen the movie?

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Speaker 1: I gotta read it? She says, Hello Aquila.

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Speaker 3: Our school board president, Karen Bird has referred this matter

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Speaker 3: to me. As far as the name Rebels goes, the

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Speaker 3: mascot image was removed long ago.

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Speaker 1: Reader, that was six years ago. Long ago.

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Speaker 3: The school is going to be seventy years old, so

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Speaker 3: you know, relativity. But in any case, long ago, as

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Speaker 3: you know, the Rebel's nickname remains. The nickname was chosen

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Speaker 3: by the first graduating class of Boone County High School,

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Speaker 3: taken from the popular nineteen fifty five movie Rebel Without

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Speaker 3: a Cause.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's worth watching.

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Speaker 3: It's a coming of age movie about emotionally confused middle

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Speaker 3: class teens. There are more than one hundred high schools

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Speaker 3: across the country with the nickname Rebels, many of whom

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Speaker 3: also took the name from the movie at that time.

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Speaker 1: Half of them are high schools in the North.

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Speaker 3: So if you're like Rebel without a Cause like the

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Speaker 3: James Dean movie, did I hear that right?

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Speaker 5: You're telling me up.

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Speaker 3: What you You say one thing, he says another, and

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Speaker 3: everybody changes back again. Akila, didn't you say in the

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Speaker 3: first episode there was an actual mascot who was unmistakably

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Speaker 3: a Confederate general in a light blue uniform, feathered cap,

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Speaker 3: and enormous mustache. Yeah, I sure did, but don't. We're

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Speaker 3: definitely going to get into why someone would bring up

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Speaker 3: fifties heart throbs in an email about Civil War mascots,

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Speaker 3: But the point is that this email was clearly sent

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Speaker 3: to discourage further action and to get me to essentially

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Speaker 3: kick rocks. Not only was this message not gonna discourage us,

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Speaker 3: we were already on our way to Florence. We knew

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Speaker 3: that we needed to have our feet on the ground

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Speaker 3: to build a coalition of allies and show Miss Brady,

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Speaker 3: along with BCHS and the school board, that I'm not

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Speaker 3: going anywhere. So, fueled by an unrelenting determination and desire

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Speaker 3: to eat Skyline Chile, I arrived in Florence in September

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Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three to truly start building this movement.

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Speaker 3: And it just so happened to be homecoming week at BCHS,

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Speaker 3: the perfect time for an alumni to come home.

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Speaker 1: I can't believe I grew up here.

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Speaker 3: I've been saying that since I got here. Is like,

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Speaker 3: you know, it's just it's it's very small European wax center. Wow,

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Speaker 3: that's a big deal for me.

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Speaker 1: That would have been a real game changer in high school.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you're gonna make it right up here. And then

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Speaker 3: we're coming up on the high school. So it's gonna

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Speaker 3: be on a right it's rebel way now, yikes. So

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Speaker 3: this this street, the other street is still Shawan Alexander,

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Speaker 3: I think.

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Speaker 1: But you have Rebel Drive. Wow, big signs main entrance

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Speaker 1: to the high school. Ooh, what is this? This is

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Speaker 1: the performing arts center? What we did not have this?

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Speaker 3: This the school must be so different inside. They gotta listen.

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Speaker 3: Shawn Alexander way for non football people. Shawn Alexander was

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Speaker 3: a legendary NFL player for the Seattle Seahawks who graduated

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Speaker 3: from Boone in the nineties. He's also a black man

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Speaker 3: who played for a team in the South called the Rebels.

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Speaker 3: His name being on one street of the school and

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Speaker 3: Rebel Drive being the name of the other street is

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Speaker 3: kind of the whole problem. In a nutshell. You see

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Speaker 3: kids in that window.

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Speaker 1: I think that might be the band room. Yeah, something

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Speaker 1: like that. All of this was a parking lot. This

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Speaker 1: is wild. There's money here now.

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Speaker 3: I know that Seawan Alexander had like a big hand

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Speaker 3: in the athletic center because he got them like sponsored

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Speaker 3: by Nike for a season like stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: But this is honestly shocking.

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Speaker 3: We've come to the history portion of the small town

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Speaker 3: high school. So buckle up, because in a story where

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Speaker 3: everyone is pointing to timeline, receipts and attention, details matter.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen fifty four, they decided to consolidate Burlington, Florence,

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Speaker 3: New Haven, and Hebern High schools into one new building,

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Speaker 3: Boone County High School, which is why it's named after

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Speaker 3: the county rather than the town. The building was erected

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Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty four on what was then the edge

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Speaker 3: of Florence. Boone County had a total of five hundred

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Speaker 3: and fifteen students enrolled in the school that year, along

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Speaker 3: with eighteen teachers and Principal Chester Goodridge. The story goes

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Speaker 3: like this. The students were allowed to vote on a mascot.

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Speaker 3: After several options were shot down, such as the Boone

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Speaker 3: County Bison or the Boone County Moonshiners, Principal Goodridge was

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Speaker 3: fed up and called the students rebels. The movie Rebel

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Speaker 3: without a Call was all the rage, and who wouldn't

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Speaker 3: want to be James Dean smoking in that leather jacket,

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Speaker 3: you know, the epitome of cool in nineteen fifty five.

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Speaker 3: It would be like if they were being formed today,

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Speaker 3: they'd be the Boone County Wednesdays or the Boone County Barbies.

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Speaker 3: Honestly legit, But I digress. The story we've been told

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Speaker 3: ends with the students choosing rebels as their mascot. Today,

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Speaker 3: Boone County has more than thirteen hundred students enrolled, and

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Speaker 3: it also turns seventy years old in twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 3: And while we were in town, we knew that we'd

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Speaker 3: need to deep dive into this possibly probably apocryphal story.

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Speaker 3: I was a lady rebel, like, when does that even need?

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Speaker 6: If Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels.

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Speaker 1: With the image of us right here in black and white.

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Speaker 3: And friends figures a flag or mascot.

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Speaker 5: Any time you're trying to mess with tradition, you get

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Speaker 5: to be ready for a serious backlash.

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Speaker 3: Planet Audio. I'm Akila Hughes, and this is Rebel Spirit,

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Speaker 3: Episode two, History Lessons. So we are at the Burlington Library.

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Speaker 3: It's the in Boone County. It's the main library for

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Speaker 3: the area. We just got a really detailed tour of

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Speaker 3: all of the local history info. So now we're just

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Speaker 3: digging through archives of yearbooks and newspapers and.

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Speaker 1: They have a lot, they have a lot of stuff.

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Speaker 3: We've got twenty pounds in years nineteen fifty one, the

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Speaker 3: other yeah, fifty three, I feel twenty three.

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Speaker 1: And fifty four would be very helpful. All right, So

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Speaker 1: this is fifteen oh a black man.

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Speaker 3: The only one of them.

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Speaker 1: Is he black.

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Speaker 3: Also, though, I'm curious if we can find anything about

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Speaker 3: Rebel Without a Cause when it was first like.

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Speaker 1: In a newspaper anywhere around.

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Speaker 3: I doubt that there was an advertisement that they all saw.

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Speaker 1: I'm like, we're obsessed with it.

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Speaker 3: Him back to the first yearbook nineteen fifty five, and

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Speaker 3: I'm just going to read everything and look at all

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Speaker 3: of the little handwritten notes.

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Speaker 7: There's got to.

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Speaker 1: Be something somewhere.

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Speaker 3: There's nothing that would even slightly allude to the fact

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Speaker 3: that they love Reout a Cause. Somebody had to have

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Speaker 3: written the story of this if it happened right like,

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Speaker 3: it just seems weird that like no one knows that

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Speaker 3: is stunning. It doesn't even mention it.

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Speaker 8: Rebel Lovicause is this pretty seminal film. When it came

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Speaker 8: out in nineteen fifty five. It was released soon after

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Speaker 8: James Dean's tragic death. I think he was not even

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Speaker 8: twenty five, and he died in a tragic automobile accident

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Speaker 8: on a California freeway. And in the movie they are

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Speaker 8: drag racing and doing what teenagers do reckless things.

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Speaker 3: This is doctor Emily Carmen, an associate professor of Film

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Speaker 3: and Media Studies at Chapman University. Her primary research focuses

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Speaker 3: on classic Hollywood cinema.

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Speaker 8: It really was this statement at the time, especially with

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Speaker 8: the director Nicholas Ray critiquing American conformity culture, conspicuous consumption.

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Speaker 8: This is the great economic boom of the fifties after

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Speaker 8: the scarcity of the Depression and the war years.

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Speaker 3: And this is a huge hit film, right, like it

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Speaker 3: takes over the country. How do you then quantify its

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Speaker 3: national effects?

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Speaker 8: Even if it wasn't digital like it is now where

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Speaker 8: you can get shock waves around the world, there was

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Speaker 8: still a big pumblicity campaign. So when a film, I

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Speaker 8: mean and when James Dean died, that's still national new internetion, right,

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Speaker 8: so there would still be a huge awareness unless the

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Speaker 8: town really had limited access to national publications. But I

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Speaker 8: still feel like James Dean dying would get from page

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Speaker 8: news in a local paper.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So from what we can salute, presuming people in

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Speaker 3: Florence had access to the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. The

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Speaker 3: October twenty fifth, nineteen fifty five issue says that it

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Speaker 3: is opening Wednesday at the RKO Palace in Cincinnati. That

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Speaker 3: was opening weekend across the country.

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Speaker 1: And there is a.

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Speaker 3: Big picture of James Dean included with the description, so

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Speaker 3: we can agree the movie was a big deal. But

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Speaker 3: it wasn't until months later January twenty ninth and thirtieth,

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifty six that Rebel Without a Cause came to Florence,

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Speaker 3: where it played the Florence Drive In. Yes, the Drive

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Speaker 3: in in January. That previous fall, they announced the introduction

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Speaker 3: of electric InCAR heaters, so that and I quote, patrons

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Speaker 3: may now enjoy living room comfort even in sub zero

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Speaker 3: weather for those that weren't interested in freezing their cars.

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Speaker 3: Rebel without a Cause also played that week indoors at

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Speaker 3: the Gaiety Theater in nearby Erlinger, Okay. So between the

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Speaker 3: two theaters, Rebel without a Cause played in the area

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Speaker 3: for a total of three days in late January. Both

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Speaker 3: screened on Sunday and Monday, the twenty ninth and thirtieth

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Speaker 3: the Gaiety he also had it on the thirty first.

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Speaker 3: That's it if you miss seeing it. The VCR wouldn't

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Speaker 3: be in living rooms for another thirty years.

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Speaker 8: I teach a class on nineteen fifties, cinema culture. And

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Speaker 8: I remember taking classes in literature and colleg nineteen fifties

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Speaker 8: when I was a student, and I think that the

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Speaker 8: fifties was a really tumultuous decade, even though it's remembered

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Speaker 8: as this, you know, Dell, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Here's just some other important dates while we're

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Speaker 3: in the fifties. The decision on Brown versus Board of

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Speaker 3: Education was issued on May seventeenth, nineteen fifty four. On

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Speaker 3: May thirty first, nineteen fifty five, the Supreme Court dropped

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Speaker 3: the sequel Brown two, demanding the implementation of desegregation with

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Speaker 3: all deliberate speed, because as always, we need to remind

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Speaker 3: folks about equality. September fourth, nineteen fifty seven was the

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Speaker 3: day the Little Rock nine, nine black students attempted to

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Speaker 3: enroll at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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Speaker 3: President Dwight D. Eisenhower had to send federal troops to

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Speaker 3: make sure these little kids could attend school without facing

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Speaker 3: violence from racist adults. One last one, September twelfth, nineteen

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Speaker 3: fifty eight, the Supreme Court ruled on Cooper versus Aaron,

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Speaker 3: which prohibited state laws from undermining the Supreme Court's authority.

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Speaker 3: All right, So the nineteen fifties was a lot more

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Speaker 3: than soda shops and leather jackets, and we're gonna get

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Speaker 3: into that in a lot more detail in a minute.

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Speaker 3: But let's get back to Rebel Without a Cause, because

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Speaker 3: here we are talking to one of the leading authorities

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Speaker 3: of classic cinema. Surely she's heard of a high school

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Speaker 3: sports team naming themselves after this seminal film, right.

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Speaker 8: No, I've not. So that was intriguing when I got

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Speaker 8: your your email request. It's like, I've never heard that. Yeah,

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Speaker 8: I mean, if you want to be I think it's

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Speaker 8: cool to be the rebels from Rebel That a Cause.

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Speaker 8: But the mascot needs to be like a cool red

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Speaker 8: jacket and blue je.

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Speaker 3: Back hair, white tea has a car like that.

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Speaker 8: Absolutely, the imagery just does not add up to that.

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Speaker 3: Okay, So, doctor Carmen may have never heard of a

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Speaker 3: high school tea naming themselves after Rebel Without a Cause,

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Speaker 3: But that's the story we've been told over and over

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Speaker 3: and over again. It's that these kids just loved Jimmy

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Speaker 3: Dean so much that they named the team after him.

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Speaker 3: And it's not only the boone County Rebels. Remember, according

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Speaker 3: to an email that we got from Barbara Brady, which

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Speaker 3: I will read again because I'm petty, there are more

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Speaker 3: than one hundred high schools across the country with the

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Speaker 3: name Rebels, many of whom also took the name from

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Speaker 3: the movie at the time. This isn't just a story,

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Speaker 3: it is the official line of the Boone County School District.

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Speaker 3: So certainly this has to match up to the relevant facts, right,

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Speaker 3: So this issue is October seventh, nineteen fifty four.

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Speaker 1: Is that Thursday?

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Speaker 3: And they have an article basic local News amount of

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Speaker 3: plant food and fertilizers.

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Speaker 1: Importance is the county agent.

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Speaker 3: Boone County High School. The athletic teams were dubbed the

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Speaker 3: Rebels by the student body in a recent school wide

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Speaker 3: vote conducted by the journalism class. The Rebel football team

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Speaker 3: made its first home appearance on the new Boone County

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Speaker 3: High School field Thursday night, September thirtieth. Twelve girls led

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Speaker 3: the Rebel cheering section. It's right here in black and

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Speaker 3: white in print in nineteen fifty four.

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Speaker 1: So they Lion, They Lion.

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Speaker 3: The first year of Boone County High School is from

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Speaker 3: September seventh, nineteen fifty four to the first graduation on

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Speaker 3: May twentieth, nineteen fifty five. Friends, they were still filming

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Speaker 3: Rebel without a Cause when that graduation took place. They

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Speaker 3: were called the Rebels a year before the movie was released.

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Speaker 3: So no, they are not named after Rebel without a Cause.

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Speaker 3: Representatives for the education system in Boone County, Kentucky are

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Speaker 3: simply lying. It's also just funny that, like, all it

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Speaker 3: took was coming to the library and we figured.

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Speaker 1: It out in like five minutes.

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Speaker 3: There's no interrogating what people are told here. It's as

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Speaker 3: you were told and they pass it down and that's

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Speaker 3: good enough. When we return, we're going to go from

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Speaker 3: brown versus board to brown versus everybody the nineteen sixties,

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Speaker 3: we'll be right back. This is sixty four. Whoa loo,

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Speaker 3: I feel like this is like, you know, as the

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Speaker 3: school's integrating, allegedly, we'll start to see the pushback. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: JFK visited Boone County during his campaign. Why did JFK

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Speaker 3: come here?

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Speaker 1: Sixty nine yearbook?

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Speaker 3: There's no mention of JFK dying. Okay, so it's not

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Speaker 3: explicitly racist yet.

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Speaker 2: No, there we are.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, there's the big Confederate flag at the football game

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty eight, and no one's acting like it's a

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Speaker 3: big deal. But it's like a sea of young white

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Speaker 3: kids in the sixties. They're like all standing at this

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Speaker 3: gate watching the football game. But flung over the gate

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Speaker 3: that they're like standing at is a huge Confederate flag.

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Speaker 3: It spans like eight kids, and there's a kid that's

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Speaker 3: probably five standing right there with it, touching it. So

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Speaker 3: it seems like it's definitely just it doesn't seem like

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Speaker 3: it's not normal at all, Like there's no nothing's pointing

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Speaker 3: it out. Mister Jerry Johnson serves as judge for the

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Speaker 3: mock trial, so it's a mock trial and they've got

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Speaker 3: a Confederate flag and judges and the judge has it

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Speaker 3: on his hat too.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's sickening.

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Speaker 3: The sinister thing is like they're not thinking about it.

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Speaker 3: There's no black people around, and like even still they're

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Speaker 3: so subjugated in society, it's not like that they care

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Speaker 3: how they feel about it, so it's like they're just.

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Speaker 1: Doing their thing.

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Speaker 3: I mean, just seeing a yearbook like this where truly

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Speaker 3: no one is of color, it's like, yeah, it's kind

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Speaker 3: of shocking.

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Speaker 6: Much of this memory of the Confederacy doesn't develop during

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Speaker 6: the Civil War. Even the Confederate flag as we know it,

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Speaker 6: the red flag with the stars and bars, that's a

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Speaker 6: flag that wasn't as popular whenever it comes to the

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Speaker 6: memory of the Confederacy until the nineteen sixties, as it

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Speaker 6: developed in opposition to the Civil rights movement.

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Speaker 3: Doctor Brandon Rinder is an assistant professor of history at

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Speaker 3: the University of Utah, but he was raised in I'm

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Speaker 3: sure the gorgeous acts and gives it away, Kentucky.

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Speaker 6: I grew up in Kentucky, a state that didn't secede

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Speaker 6: from the Union, but it has more Confederate monuments and

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Speaker 6: memorials in the state than it does Union monuments and memorials.

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Speaker 3: We wanted to talk to Brandon because as a Kentuckian

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Speaker 3: and as a historian who specializes in black life in

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Speaker 3: post war America, he could tell us more about what

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Speaker 3: the mid nineteen fifties was like for black kids in

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Speaker 3: northern Kentucky.

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Speaker 6: For the most part, people resisted desegregation as much as

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Speaker 6: they could. There were schools that would close down in

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Speaker 6: order to avoid desegregation. In some cases, they would allow

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Speaker 6: a very minimal number of black students sent to white

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Speaker 6: schools to argue that they had desegregated, when really they had.

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Speaker 6: In most cases, it took roughly ten to fifteen years

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Speaker 6: for most schools to actually desegregate according to federal standards.

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Speaker 6: Whenever you consider all of the housing inequality within major cities,

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Speaker 6: the amount of poverty. In many cases, this forced a

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Speaker 6: lot of black residents in these cities to areas outside

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Speaker 6: of the cities. And so if I had to guess,

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Speaker 6: there are probably a lot of black Southerners that might

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Speaker 6: have moved north and ended up in Cincinnati, but then

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Speaker 6: because of the conditions within those cities, had to find

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Speaker 6: cheaper housing options, had to find more livable conditions just

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Speaker 6: outside of that city, and so it could be in

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Speaker 6: places like Covington or in places like Florence.

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Speaker 3: Black people have been coming to the northern Kentucky region

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Speaker 3: for a long time. Cincinnati was a key hub in

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Speaker 3: the nineteenth Underground Railroad because the Ohio River provided a

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Speaker 3: crucial passage to freedom.

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Speaker 7: In the north.

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Speaker 3: Of course, with black migration comes anti black violence here.

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Speaker 2: The racial violence started in an open public way started

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Speaker 2: right after the Civil War, and that was just like

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Speaker 2: this campaign of terror that started in eighteen sixty six.

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Speaker 3: This is Hillary Delaney of Boone County Public Libraries and

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Speaker 3: a Boone County High School alumna. She helms the Borderlands

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Speaker 3: Archive and History Center, where her focus is on African

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Speaker 3: American history. In Boone County, Kentucky.

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Speaker 2: Returning Confederate soldiers were terrorizing and feeding people and saying

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Speaker 2: you've got to get out or we'll kill you.

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Speaker 3: That campaign of terror was based at a tavern in

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Speaker 3: nearby Walton, Kentucky, where the former Confederate soldiers set up shop.

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Speaker 3: They were responsible for eight lynchings in a ten year

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Speaker 3: period from eighteen seventy six through eighteen eighty five. Names

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Speaker 3: of four of their eight victims are part of the

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Speaker 3: Lynching Memorial at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

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Speaker 3: in Montgomery, Alabama. Racial violence continued in the area for decades.

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Speaker 2: In nineteen seventeen, somehow the corner was on site when

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Speaker 2: people had chased this man that they thought stole from

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Speaker 2: someone and they were threatening to lynch him, and he

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Speaker 2: was in a tree, literally in a tree, trying to

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Speaker 2: get away from them, and this corner using smart actually

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Speaker 2: using sort of a sense of humor approach to talk

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Speaker 2: them down. I'll come on now, boys, you know, like

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Speaker 2: I don't want to work today, so come on, you know,

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Speaker 2: huh dark dark dark.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, like a coroner says.

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Speaker 2: It's really glad handing them and all that. But he

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Speaker 2: saved the guy's life. But that would have been, you know,

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Speaker 2: just a generation before.

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Speaker 3: This was a generation before Boone County High School opened

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Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty four. In the first class of BHS,

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Speaker 3: the children of People very Much Alive in nineteen seventeen

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Speaker 3: named their team after Rebel without a Cause before it

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Speaker 3: had even been filmed. Unless rebel really meant something else.

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Speaker 6: The term rebel. The historical context of the term rebel

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Speaker 6: is so interesting because during the Civil War and then

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Speaker 6: immediately after the war, Southerners Confederate sympathizers referred to the

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Speaker 6: war as the War of Northern Aggression, that it wasn't

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Speaker 6: the South's fault that the Civil War happened, it was

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Speaker 6: the North's fault. Northerners referred to it as the War

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Speaker 6: of Southern rebellion. Rebel actually changes immediately after the Civil

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Speaker 6: War from a symbol of shame as people who caused

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Speaker 6: the Civil War to more of a point of pride,

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Speaker 6: and so we see this in high school mascots. Most notably,

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Speaker 6: we can see this in the state of Mississippi, where

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Speaker 6: the University of Mississippi Ole miss their mascot is also

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Speaker 6: the Rebel. The Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens,

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Speaker 6: gave a cornerstone speech saying that slavery and white supremacy

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Speaker 6: were the cornerstone of Southern society. But then immediately after

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Speaker 6: the Civil War he writes a book explaining that his

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Speaker 6: cornerstone speech wasn't exactly interpreted the way that he meant it.

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Speaker 6: He says that the Civil War wasn't about slavery or

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Speaker 6: white supremacy. It was about the idea of states rights exactly.

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Speaker 3: I want to break out of the interview for just

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Speaker 3: a moment, because when doctor Rinder brought up the cornerstone speech,

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Speaker 3: I was intrigued. Here was the VP of the Confederacy

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Speaker 3: spelling out before the start of the Civil War what

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Speaker 3: he and the Confederacy saw as the reasoning. And it

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Speaker 3: is damning the Constitution.

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Speaker 7: It is true secured every essential guarantee of the Institution

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Speaker 7: while it should last, and hence no argument can be

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Speaker 7: justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured because of

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Speaker 7: the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were

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Speaker 7: fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality

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Speaker 7: of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation,

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Speaker 7: and the government built upon it fell when the storm

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Speaker 7: came and the wind blew. Our new government is founded

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Speaker 7: upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid. It's

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Speaker 7: cornerstone rests upon the.

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Speaker 9: Great truth that the Nigra is not equal to the

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Speaker 9: white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race is

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Speaker 9: his natural and normal condition.

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Speaker 3: I cannot imagine a worse sentiment. And yet it's an

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Speaker 3: uphill battle to change the team name. Anyway, back to

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Speaker 3: doctor Brandon render.

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Speaker 6: Well, a lot of people that want to talk to

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Speaker 6: me about this as a history professor and say that,

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Speaker 6: you know, people are racing history by taking these statues

437
00:23:47,800 --> 00:23:51,440
Speaker 6: down or by removing Confederate flags, and I'm like, no, Actually,

438
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,040
Speaker 6: what this is doing is in many ways recovering the

439
00:23:54,040 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 6: true history of what's happened to you. And so what's

440
00:23:57,480 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 6: happened is that over time it's been revised so much.

441
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:02,399
Speaker 6: We've taken all of the negative elements out of something

442
00:24:02,520 --> 00:24:06,160
Speaker 6: like the term rebel or something like a Confederate statue.

443
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 6: But really what we're doing is actually giving this more history,

444
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 6: not the history that we're comfortable with, but maybe the

445
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:15,680
Speaker 6: history that makes us a little bit uncomfortable.

446
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 3: History is uncomfortable. Let's just say it. A lot of

447
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:22,520
Speaker 3: bad things happened in the past. The history of America

448
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 3: is not pretty. It's the history of chattel slavery, and

449
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 3: of native genocide and the internment of Japanese Americans. To

450
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 3: whitewash literally our history is to do it a disservice.

451
00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 10: You know.

452
00:24:34,640 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 2: I've had, really, honestly, some white people say to me,

453
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:41,720
Speaker 2: and this is not inn this is in Henderson County.

454
00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:43,919
Speaker 2: I did a program and this woman said, well, why

455
00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:46,480
Speaker 2: do you even do this? First I did not.

456
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 6: I was of like.

457
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:52,760
Speaker 3: Meaning, you know, yeah today, or like.

458
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:58,480
Speaker 2: My answer is, you know, I work in local history,

459
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:01,119
Speaker 2: and this is local history. And you know, if we

460
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 2: decided in a rural community that we were only going

461
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 2: to do the history of the people who farmed tobacco

462
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 2: and not the people who grew corn, we just leave

463
00:25:08,800 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 2: them out, pretend like it didn't exist, and there was

464
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 2: no corn in the first place. And that's really dumbin

465
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 2: it down, but that's exactly what, Yeah, you have to

466
00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:20,959
Speaker 2: when we have tours, there's always someone who says, well,

467
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 2: you know, my family had slaves, but they were like

468
00:25:23,320 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 2: family really, And I say, well, if you owned your

469
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 2: family and they didn't have any autonomy and they couldn't leave, yeah,

470
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 2: then it would like family. But no, I mean I

471
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 2: always say something like that, aren't you glad that we

472
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:44,639
Speaker 2: know better now?

473
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 3: But do we know better now? I mean, really, if

474
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 3: we were in such denial about that past that we'd

475
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:53,320
Speaker 3: make up a fairy tale about how the team became

476
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:56,640
Speaker 3: the rebels because of James Dean and not blatantly from

477
00:25:56,640 --> 00:26:00,120
Speaker 3: Confederate soldiers. Confederate soldiers who waged a war of terror

478
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:04,199
Speaker 3: across this very region. What have we actually learned? I

479
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:07,320
Speaker 3: think a lot about the first black students at my

480
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 3: high school and what it must have been like to

481
00:26:10,080 --> 00:26:10,879
Speaker 3: walk those halls.

482
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 2: I think the first couple of years that Boone County

483
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 2: when it was integrated, of the people that stayed in

484
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 2: the county, the families that stayed in the county, they

485
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 2: stayed very low key. I think, right, just like put

486
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 2: your head down in the Bible.

487
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 1: We're going to get out of here as soon as possible.

488
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 2: Survival.

489
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:29,240
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah.

490
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,120
Speaker 3: Unlike the story of Ruby Bridges or the Little Rock nine,

491
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 3: the earliest African American teachers and students at Boone County

492
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 3: are quiet whispers and newspapers and yearbooks. It's difficult to

493
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 3: tell how open Boone County was to integrating. A nineteen

494
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 3: fifty five article specifically mentions that the quote reason for

495
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 3: the year's grace on integration of graded schools was to

496
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 3: give the board time to work out a solution for

497
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:57,359
Speaker 3: the employment of Wallace straight Negro teacher. Another article in

498
00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 3: the fall of nineteen fifty five mentions, quote, two rose

499
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 3: are reported at the Boone County High School in Florence.

500
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 3: Looking at the nineteen fifty six year book, we can

501
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:07,119
Speaker 3: see a phase or two that pop out from the

502
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 3: crowd Sophomore Alis Sanders, freshman Shirley Frasier, freshman Lawrence Webb.

503
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:14,520
Speaker 3: In the nineteen fifty seven yearbook, it's a couple of

504
00:27:14,560 --> 00:27:17,720
Speaker 3: totally different black students in the previous year. Oh and

505
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 3: by the way, the nineteen fifty seven yearbook has a

506
00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 3: rearing horse with a Confederate soldier saber in hand on

507
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,439
Speaker 3: the cover. You remember that scene in Rebel Without a

508
00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 3: Cause where James Dean was on a horse with a saber, right,

509
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 3: But the first black graduate from Boone wasn't until nineteen

510
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 3: fifty nine. He was there for just two years, the

511
00:27:35,000 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 3: first black teacher who the board apparently needed a year

512
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:39,640
Speaker 3: to figure out what to do with. While as Straighter

513
00:27:40,080 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 3: was the son of an enslaved man and attended both

514
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 3: Kentucky State College and Wilberforce University. He then taught at

515
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 3: the Burlington Colored School and even served as its principal

516
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 3: until the schools consolidated with the other county schools in

517
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:55,919
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty four. He then became the bchs assistant librarian.

518
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 3: As head librarians come and go over the years, mister

519
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 3: Strader is all the assistant until his retirement in nineteen

520
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:05,200
Speaker 3: sixty six. There's a very nice Black History Month write

521
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 3: up about him in the Boone County High School student newspaper,

522
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 3: still as of twenty twenty four, named the rebellion as

523
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 3: in the War of Southern Rebellion, I want to bring

524
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 3: it back to Shirley Fraser, one of the first students

525
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 3: to integrate Boone County High School. The last name Fraser

526
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 3: is local to this part of northern Kentucky. Joel Fraser

527
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 3: was a slave owner over in Union, just a few

528
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 3: miles south of Florence. One of his slaves, named John Fraser,

529
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:35,919
Speaker 3: was the grandfather of Shirley. She was one of the

530
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,960
Speaker 3: first black students at a school built eight miles from

531
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 3: where her grandfather lived in Bondage and seeing a thirty

532
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 3: six percent of all white families owned slaves before the

533
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 3: Civil War in Boone County specifically, Shirley was definitely going

534
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 3: to school with the descendants of slaveholders. Shirley Fraser passed

535
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,440
Speaker 3: away in twenty twenty at the age of eighty. Her

536
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:01,040
Speaker 3: grandparents were born slaves, and she died a few years ago.

537
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 3: What I'm getting at here is that this is recent history.

538
00:29:05,320 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 3: What we call history was someone else's present, and we

539
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 3: are living through history every day, the knowledge of which

540
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 3: has always inspired me to change it more unchanging history.

541
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 3: After the break, the woman.

542
00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,240
Speaker 5: Who's sitting down right now in a blue shirt had

543
00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:31,040
Speaker 5: a little box of pins.

544
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 1: The little girl in her board just took one of

545
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: the pins and they are rainbow heart pins.

546
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,920
Speaker 3: Okay, nice, So that's what it must be something. Yeah,

547
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 3: and she's got one on.

548
00:29:43,360 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 1: They're giving them out. Yeah, I'll take one o. The

549
00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: kids are all right.

550
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 10: Welcome, welcome you writing to this new board meeting of

551
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 10: this scholar. I would like to say that this weird

552
00:29:59,200 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 10: answered off.

553
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 3: We decided to attend a school board meeting, not exactly incognito,

554
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 3: but not there to make waves or bring up biscuits

555
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:08,840
Speaker 3: or rebels just yet. We were there to learn about

556
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 3: what's going on at the school and how the decision

557
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 3: making bodies work. But we unexpectedly showed up to a

558
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,240
Speaker 3: meeting that planned to address Bill SB one fifty.

559
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:22,680
Speaker 11: Senate Bill one fifty will become law today in Frankfurt.

560
00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 11: Republican lawmakers in both chambers overturned Governor Andy Basheer's veto

561
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,720
Speaker 11: of a bill critics c as a bill being against

562
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,760
Speaker 11: transgender youth as it bans gender or firm and care

563
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 11: for miners, and set school policies on bathroom use, students

564
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 11: preferred pronouns, and teaching sexual identity.

565
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 3: Once we clude into what was unraveling right in front

566
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,160
Speaker 3: of us, we anticipated a lot of ugly and frankly

567
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 3: hateful remarks.

568
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:54,000
Speaker 10: Is the law, and we have to follow the law,

569
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 10: and that's sometimes hard for the community to understand.

570
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 3: I mean, this place isn't exactly wronghold of progressive thinking,

571
00:31:01,720 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 3: but what actually went down shocked the hell out of me.

572
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 3: I'd like to speak to you today about SB one fifty.

573
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:09,080
Speaker 8: I would like to discuss the emotional and physical pain

574
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 8: that being misgendered caused me.

575
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: Union.

576
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 3: I'm also here to talk about SB I am here

577
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 3: tonight because I'm a proud Cyo Kentuckian and because I

578
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 3: care deeply about LGBTQ plus students and families in new

579
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:21,960
Speaker 3: kind of schools.

580
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 8: SB one fifty is unconstitutional and will be struck dow.

581
00:31:25,320 --> 00:31:28,840
Speaker 10: Important come today about SB one fifty. I hope in

582
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 10: your hearts that most of you believe that it's wrong.

583
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 4: Hello, my name is Amber Hoffmann.

584
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 10: I've actually reached out to you guys personally. Only one

585
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 10: of you responded back to me.

586
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 12: So instead of taking the time to speak to you,

587
00:31:40,040 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 12: I'm going to take this.

588
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 10: Opportunity to speak to the educators and administrators that I

589
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 10: know are listening to this and that are currently scared

590
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:53,360
Speaker 10: of the implementation of SB one fifty in Boone County

591
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 10: school districts. So this is a guide to Kentucky Senate

592
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:01,840
Speaker 10: Bill SB one fifty. SB one fifty does not require

593
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 10: schools to out lgbt Q students.

594
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:09,120
Speaker 12: It actually prohibits the Kentucky Department of Education from requiring

595
00:32:09,200 --> 00:32:13,840
Speaker 12: schools to keep information private from parents. It does not

596
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 12: require the removal of pride flats or safe space tickers.

597
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 12: It says nothing at all related to these items.

598
00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:24,360
Speaker 3: After the meeting, well after the public comments section and

599
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 3: before they started getting into budget details, we stepped outside

600
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 3: and there they.

601
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 1: Were, Hey, just remember what we did a year ago.

602
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:37,600
Speaker 3: Most of the speakers against SB one fifty huddled together

603
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,440
Speaker 3: in the warm, dark night hashing out. The next moves

604
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 3: came inture war.

605
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 11: Do you know?

606
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 3: They were strategizing on how to transform this not so

607
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 3: welcoming place where I grew up into something better. It

608
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 3: hit me in a way I wasn't expecting.

609
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 1: Wait are you from mbr NO, But I was on

610
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 1: cricket media.

611
00:32:56,520 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I know that every day. Yeah, seeing

612
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:06,080
Speaker 3: these folks take on a giant much bigger than themselves,

613
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 3: it lit a spark of hope. It made me think

614
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 3: that maybe my own mission could catch fire in this town.

615
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 3: And it was crystal clear now. If there's any hope

616
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 3: for that, it's through Amber Hoffman.

617
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 4: I've been doing this work for a while, just like

618
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 4: I don't know that I wouldn't say for fun. Like

619
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 4: I feel like it's like my obligation to participate in

620
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 4: what is going on in my country and what's happening

621
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 4: locally in my community. So I do it a look

622
00:33:33,120 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 4: like as an obligation, I kind of think, But I

623
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 4: love it.

624
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:38,520
Speaker 3: Amber Hoffman is a district parent and member of the

625
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 3: political nonprofit Northern Kentucky Initiative, which advocates for progressive issues

626
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:43,959
Speaker 3: and provides community support.

627
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 4: We have decided to take on Moms for Liberty. We

628
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:50,280
Speaker 4: have a chapter of Moms for Liberty that is operating

629
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 4: in Boom County. There's two or three of them that

630
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 4: have really been the face of pushing this kind of

631
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 4: hateful legislation, and they've done a fantastic job of it.

632
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:03,920
Speaker 4: They've gotten behind the representative, Steve Browlings, and he helps

633
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 4: sponsor some of the more heinous bills that they've been

634
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,800
Speaker 4: trying to put through, an SB one fifty, for example.

635
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: Moms for Liberty isn't just a Kentucky problem, but a

636
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 3: nationwide organization held bent on imposing their views on gender, sex, race,

637
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,719
Speaker 3: and history on school boards and state legislatures everywhere. But

638
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:25,040
Speaker 3: they're also a local problem too. School Board member Cindy

639
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,319
Speaker 3: Young is the vice president of the Boone County chapter

640
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 3: of the Moms for Liberty, at least she was before

641
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,719
Speaker 3: the chapter was dissolved because the chapter president was caught

642
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 3: being racist. Shocking. I know. Trust me when I say

643
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 3: this isn't the last you'll hear about this on the podcast,

644
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:40,840
Speaker 3: but for now, suffice it to say that the Moms

645
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 3: for Liberty are a problem everywhere and also here and

646
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 3: there are a problem Amber Hoffman is working to combat.

647
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 4: So a couple of years ago, pre COVID, I started

648
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 4: doing this thing where I would have what I was

649
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,480
Speaker 4: calling political parties at my house where I would just

650
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 4: invite people that I thought had progressive ideas, and I

651
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:02,640
Speaker 4: would be like cockergate, let's meet basic grassroots, like, let's

652
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 4: take it back to the garage and have these conversations.

653
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 4: Everyone here feels incredibly disconnected, and it is. It has

654
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:13,479
Speaker 4: been a labor of love in this area. And since

655
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 4: I've been doing it now for you know, five or

656
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 4: six years, anytime something like this would come up. We

657
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:20,440
Speaker 4: would just reach out, all of us would reach out

658
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 4: to each other and be like, hey, did you hear

659
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 4: this is happening.

660
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:23,879
Speaker 2: The actual people that.

661
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:25,719
Speaker 4: Control this place, that have no idea what's going on,

662
00:35:26,320 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 4: they have no clue how different it is on the ground.

663
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: Now, this is the old stomping grounds. They did add sidewalks.

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00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:37,800
Speaker 1: Shout out to Mayor.

665
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 3: It only took my entire life, But I remember, like

666
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:43,399
Speaker 3: I would walk to a friend's house and like there

667
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 3: was never a sidewalk.

668
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:46,000
Speaker 1: You still know, you.

669
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,399
Speaker 2: Can actually see they're putting the sidewalk in right there,

670
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:52,920
Speaker 2: right like that gravel is the sidewalk, and there's.

671
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 1: People walking on the dirt. All of this is different.

672
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 3: Driving up Burlington Pike towards the high school, you pass

673
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 3: a Spanish language church. A mosque is right across the

674
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 3: street from bchs. Amber's right, It is different on the ground. Now,

675
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 3: coming to Florence, revisiting the school I went to, in

676
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 3: the streets that I grew up on, seeing the homecoming

677
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,959
Speaker 3: parade and the diversity of the kids that took part.

678
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 3: Whispering at the library as the staff helped every kind

679
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,880
Speaker 3: of person, seeing the crowd of people willing to stand

680
00:36:24,960 --> 00:36:27,720
Speaker 3: up at the school board and speak truth to power.

681
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,680
Speaker 3: I saw just how different it really was. And yet,

682
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:35,240
Speaker 3: even as change moves to town, the shadow of history

683
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 3: still looms over the region because people are too unwilling

684
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:43,320
Speaker 3: or too scared to face it. One of the places

685
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 3: we'll be passing did change their name. It used to

686
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 3: be I think Plantation Point, and you know, they were like, oh, ksnay, yeah, yeah,

687
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 3: I don't know what this place is called up here,

688
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 3: but this used to be a plantation apartment complex. And

689
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 3: like I remember like the black quarterback there.

690
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:02,759
Speaker 1: I was like, you live at the plantation. Yeah, Now

691
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: it's weaver Farm as you can see. They're like, it's

692
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: a farm. It's not plantation, it's a farm. Some progress,

693
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:11,040
Speaker 1: I suppose.

694
00:37:14,120 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 3: Seeing the changes in Florence and meeting people like Hillary

695
00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:20,240
Speaker 3: at the library and Amber, I realized that not everyone

696
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:22,520
Speaker 3: is afraid of the past. That there are people who

697
00:37:22,560 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 3: are willing to look clear out at history and say

698
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:27,279
Speaker 3: the obvious but brave thing that we don't have to

699
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 3: be defined by it, that we can move beyond it

700
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 3: to build better things for everyone. But it means being

701
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 3: honest about it. And so I'll be honest now the

702
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 3: Boone County Rebels namesake does not come from Rebel without

703
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 3: a cause. They were named the Rebels, like hundreds of

704
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 3: other high schools that took on the name Rebel in

705
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 3: the iconography of the Confederacy in the nineteen fifties and

706
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:52,680
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties as a response to desegregation. A whole

707
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,480
Speaker 3: lot of kids and administrators saw the change that was

708
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 3: happening in their world and decided they would rather embrace

709
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 3: the Confederacy than the black kids just trying to go

710
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 3: to school. Truth is hard, history is ugly, but the

711
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 3: future doesn't have to be. We can change, and friends,

712
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:13,799
Speaker 3: We're gonna do it more than ever I know it.

713
00:38:22,280 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 3: Rebel Spirit is a production of Ninth Planet Audio in

714
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:29,240
Speaker 3: association with iHeart Podcasts. Reporting and writing by me Aquila Hughes.

715
00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 3: I'm also an executive producer and the host. Produced by

716
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 3: Dan Sinker, edited by Josie azam Our. Assistant editor is

717
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 3: Jennifer Dean. Music composed by Charlie Sun, Sound design and

718
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:45,400
Speaker 3: mixing by Josie azam Our. Theme song is all the

719
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,040
Speaker 3: Things I Couldn't Say, performed by Bussy and the Bass.

720
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 3: Courtesy of Arts and Crafts Productions, Inc. Our production coordinator

721
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 3: is Kyle Hinton, Our clearance coordinator is Anna Sun Andshine

722
00:38:56,120 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 3: Production accounting by Dill pret Sing, Additional research support.

723
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:00,760
Speaker 1: From Janie Dillard.

724
00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 3: Cornerstone's speech voice performance by Hal Lublin. Executive producers from

725
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:09,680
Speaker 3: Ninth Planet Audio are Elizabeth Baquet and Jimmy Miller. Special

726
00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 3: thanks to Jay Becker and the whole team at BLDG,

727
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:16,440
Speaker 3: the Florence Y'alls, Amber Hoffmann, Hilary Delaney, and Leslie Chambers.

728
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 3: If you have a racist mascot at your high school

729
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 3: or are an alumni of a high school with a

730
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 3: racist mascot and want to share your own experience, please

731
00:39:24,600 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 3: email us at Rebelspirit podcast at gmail dot com. We

732
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:37,759
Speaker 3: would love to hear from you