#Quartz Hill High School drops ‘Rebel’ mascot

A California high school is dropping its controversial “Rebel” nickname and mascot after 56 years of backing the symbolic Confederate soldier known as “Johnny Reb,” district officials said.

The change is to create an atmosphere of “acceptance, respect and love” for all students at Quartz Hill High School in Quartz Hill, the Antelope Valley Press reported.

“The more recent events that have transpired locally and across the world have resulted in a sincere reflection on our core values as an institution and the way in which we represent those values to our community,” Antelope Valley Union High School District officials announced Thursday. “It is abundantly clear that we can no longer continue to use the rebel mascot to represent our school community.”

The decision is effective immediately. Students and staff will now collaborate to pick a new mascot. Its current iteration – a blue-and-gold revolutionary soldier — had been in use since 2017, the newspaper reported.

“They did update it slightly to look more of a rancher mascot,” Desiree Fernandez, who launched a Change.org petition calling for its ouster, told the newspaper while alleging she saw a lot of racial bias at the school.

Fernandez said she met with Quartz Hill principal Zach Mercier for three hours on Wednesday prior to the announcement.

“I did get the idea that he had spent some time in wanting to move forward as far as changing the reputation of the school and getting rid of the mascot,” Fernandez said.

The decision came just over a week after the body of a 24-year-old black man, Robert Fuller, was found hanging from a tree outside Palmdale City Hall, about 12 miles away, the Los Angeles Times reported. Fuller’s cause of death remains under investigation, according to the newspaper.

The contentious logo then became a topic of debate at an Antelope Valley Union High School district board meeting one day after Fuller’s death.

The mascot, according to a school program celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2014, was initially chosen by students, parents and community members who fought to secure an injunction to have the school built, the Antelope Valley Press reports.

The moniker was selected due to that struggle, but alumni have said the school’s mascot also appeared at football games on horseback in a blue uniform with gold stripes while holding a Confederate flag, according to Antelope Valley Press archives.

In 1995, a local NAACP official asked the school district to ditch “Johnny Reb,” saying it divided the student body. The school later removed all Confederate flags and swords from the mascot’s imagery and redesigned its letterhead, according to the newspaper.

An English teacher at the school, Carmen Wilson, said the decision feels like a “new day.”

“Now I will finally be able to wear spirit gear,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “I haven’t ever even uttered ‘Quartz Hill Rebels’ in the five years I’ve taught here.”

Former WWE wrestler George Murdoch — aka “Tyrus” from Fox Nation’s talk show “Nuff Said With Tyrus” — played football, basketball and track at Quartz Hill and said he never understood the Rebel connection in California.

“I hated it,” Murdoch told the Los Angeles Times. “Being called a Rebel didn’t make sense to use. We’re not in the South. We’re in California. We just didn’t get it.”