For both my birthday friend & myself, this seemed normal (as normal as anything in high school), but my friend didn't remember something specific I recalled: there was a giant mural in the cafeteria of a Southern plantation. Since he couldn't bring it to mind, I looked around for evidence online.
I found, archived at the University of North Texas, a book called "School Spirit or School Hate: The
Confederate Battle Flag, Texas High Schools, and Memory, 1953-2002" by
Perry Dirickson, which, you may notice, kind of rhymes with my name. You can see the pages I'm about to quote here.
I warn you: the book is badly written. I have copied it verbatim, but did feel the need to note when there were egregious grammar mistakes. Some of the commentary feels forced & awkward, but the historical part of it is eye-opening.
At South Garland High School, the students chose the Colonels & the Confederate flag because of the Civil War centennial. The school opened in the fall of 1964. The year before, students who would attend the school voted for the Colonels as mascot & adopted an Old South theme. South Garland was located at the southern edge of Garland's residential area at the time. There were few houses; mostly cotton fields surrounded the school. This added to the Old South feel of the school. South Garland High School released the first edition of the school newspaper on Friday, October 2, 1964, with the name "Plantation News." In the paper, the cartoon "Colonel's Plantation" ran, displaying the paternalism implied by the school's mascot. The cartoon presented three characters: the Colonel, Rastus, & Liza. Liza & Rastus were portrayed as poor whites in tattered clothing whom [sic] used broken English. The Colonel dressed in an all-white suit with a black tie & spoke impeccable English. This reinforced the romantic view of the Old South & the class superiority implied by the mascot name of Colonels.
Other traditions reinforced the Old South theme. The students named the drill team, Southern Belles. The cheering section, underclassmen drill team members, named itself the Dixie Darlings, & the fight song played to the tune of "Dixie." Another tradition that the students tried to initiate, although it did not last, was a fundraiser to earn money for student activities. The fundraiser was a slave auction. The slaves were members of the drill team who sold themselves to male students for a day for whatever the buy [sic] wanted, such as washing his car. The girls dressed in sackcloth, wore their hair in dog-ears, donned a beanie or cowboy hat, & wore no make-up with mismatched shoes. The Clothes [sic] worn by the "slaves" were eerily similar to the clothes of actual slaves. To add to the Old South theme, the school painted a plantation mural in the cafeteria with a generic white-columned mansion surrounded by fields of cotton devoid of any black slaves working the fields. The omission of workers in the mural portrayed an understanding the workers in the field were black slaves. By leaving them out, the administration was saying in a nice way that black slaves were not important & as an extension, blacks were not important as well.
South Garland students not only developed traditions based on the Old South, they also adopted the Confederate flag as their school's symbol & school flag. Before 1967, the school used a Confederate battle flag as its school flag. In the fall of 1967, the 1966 seniors presented the school a gift, the South Garland flag, which was the official Colonel flag. The flag's design included the school's crest in the flag's center as well as "S" & "G" for South Garland on the outer part of the flag. The school called its crest the "libertas," liberty in Latin, the Garland family motto, The "libertas" had the colonel's head on top of a shield with crossed sabers. On the shield, the Garland family crest appeared in the upper left quadrant. The Confederate flag was in the upper right corner. In the lower left quadrant, the golden bugle symbolized class "spirit [sic] de corps" & aggressiveness in the future. The torch of knowledge centered by live oak & olive branches borrowed from the Great Seal of the State of Texas. The "S" for South was to the left of the "lbertas" & the "G" to the right. This would remain the South Garland flag until 1991. The South Garland students viewed the flag as their flag. The design of the flag incorporated the Confederate battle flag, but the students saw the banner as their flag & claimed pointed [sic] out that this standard was not the Confederate battle flag. The flag's inclusion of the South Garland High's crest & the "S" & "G" separated it from the association with the Confederate battle flag in the minds of students.
I remember in the 1990s my family members griping about how the NAACP was going to sue the school & replace the flag. ("It's not racist, it's tradition!") It turns out the school district did it themselves (although doubtless there were some who may well have filed a lawsuit). According to Wikipedia, "the Garland Independent School Board voted 6 to 1 at its August 1, 1991, meeting, to discontinue use of the altered Confederate flag as the school flag & to also change the color of the mascot's uniform from gray to blue & red." The mural, presumably, is still there. The Wikipedia adds, "Today many students still use the Confederate flag to symbolize the school's 'southern culture' with little to no backlash from students or parents. However, South Garland High School & the GISD refuse to recognize the flag. The school still uses the song 'Dixie' as the school's fight song to this day."
My friend, who I hope doesn't mind me sharing this, texted something about those years that may explain why we weren't as horrified when we were students as I imagine you are reading this. He said, "I just recall high school as being sort of frightening & overwhelming at times & mind-numbingly tedious at other times. I had no cultural reference points or socialization to prepare me for it."
Me neither.
3 comments:
I went to South Garland as well, graduated in 2001 at that time, the mural was still there although it did look like there had been some changes. My brother went there as well and graduated in 94. He said the mural had black people picking cotton. That wasn't there when I was there... But as a black female I remember the whole theme (although revised by the time I got there) was offensive. It's very unsettling to have confederate flags coming down your street everyday and not know the intentions of the person waving it.
Thank you for your comment.
As I racked my brain about that lunch area - especially since I can find no images of the mural online - my memory is telling me that there were no actual figures in the plantation scene (as the book I quoted says). As awful & racist South Garland could be, I don't think that they'd go that far. But I understand how one's memory would add such things - it's pretty much implied it was an antebellum plantation.
I keep thinking I'll call & ask someone there. But maybe the next time I'm in Garland, if it's during school hours, I'll just wander in. & if it's there, I'll take a picture of it.
Actually this is a graduate thesis, not a book, the information contained is correct about the mural. You can search the archives and find the references at any library. When writing a thesis, all research is validated and confirmed before awarded a degree and the thesis is published. The advisers for this a known historians in the field of Southern History and would not be listed if they did not back and check the research as well as writing.
Garland was a district known for racism and inequality. I am not even from the area and have seen where they used acid on the stone outside the school to attempt to remove from the etching, Confederate symbolism.
“The same factors which were found to exist in Brown v. Board of Education, and which led the Supreme Court to hold that separate education was ‘inherently unequal,’ exhibit themselves in” Texas’ segregated districts, Judge William Wayne Justice wrote in one order.
In 1970, an East Texas-based federal court mandated that a list of school districts tackle a long list of tasks designed to make sure its black students were learning and playing in the same classrooms and playgrounds as their white peers. Several Texas districts that remained under a federal court order, San Angelo and Garland.
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