No one is indispensable. You learn that when you retire. No matter who you are — or what you’ve done — the world moves on.
Anybody remember Theodore Judah? Probably not, yet he united the nation with America’s first transcontinental railroad. How about Henry Dunant? He won the first Nobel Prize.
Retirement brings reflection, and reflection brings regret. The person who, when looking back over his life, says he wouldn’t change a thing, is either blind or stupid. Most of us would give our false teeth for a few do-overs.
One of mine dates to 1999 when a visiting fan filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in Washington challenging the display of Confederate battle flags at a Maryville High School football game. He likened it to a Klan rally. In the words of the law, we had created a racially “hostile environment.”
And it wasn’t just at our football games. The flags were everywhere. On the walls of the gymnasium, the cafeteria, even on our lunchroom trays.
I was chairman of the school board, and Mike Dalton was our superintendent. We convinced the feds to allow us the opportunity to conduct our own investigation and, perhaps, fashion our own remedy before they dragged us into court.
They acquiesced. So, investigate we did. Even held public hearings. The ACLU, NAACP, PTA, Sons of the Confederacy. Everybody showed up. The crowd spilled out of our largest auditorium and onto the street.
And to our utter delight, we watched as White students listened, learned and ultimately deferred to the wishes of their African American classmates. They ditched the Confederate flag, designed a new school flag of their own making and leaned into the business of reeducating our community about the origin and meaning of the Maryville Rebel, which had nothing to do with the Confederacy and originated when the school — previously known as the Red Wave and Red Elephants — was sanctioned for violating the rules of the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association. I can still remember encouraging the principal to hang portraits of other famous “rebels” in the hallways of Maryville High. Galileo, George Washington, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Tubman, Albert Einstein, Dr. King, Elvis, Picasso.
It was a worthy effort, but ultimately we failed. Fans continued to bring Confederate paraphernalia to football games and, even worse, people outside of Maryville hadn’t a clue that the Maryville Rebel meant anything other than what the common understanding of that moniker was and is to this day. A Confederate. Now, here we are more than two decades later, still arguing over a name that a majority of Americans associate with racism.
Just last week I had coffee with a highly regarded educator from another school district who happens to be White, male and Republican. When I asked him his impressions of our school system — which he acknowledged was probably the best in the state — he went straight to our Achilles heel.
“I can’t believe you still call yourselves Rebels.”
Well, I can. People don’t see what we don’t want to see.
Change will come, of course. It’s inevitable. If for no other reason than because business will demand it. The Chamber of Commerce and City Council will tire of having the image of our otherwise idyllic little town tarnished by a mascot that the broader public associates with white supremacy.
Of course, there is a better reason than that it’s bad for business. Our African American neighbors have asked us to do it. Repeatedly. Saying that they have been patient with us is akin to saying it’s a long flight to Mars.
If you’re not on the Board of Education, there is a limit to what you can do about this situation. But you’re not powerless. Far from it.
The Maryville City Schools Foundation has created a scholarship program for African American students who wish to attend four-year colleges and universities but need a little help. This appears to be Tennessee’s first scholarship program designed to address the educational and economic inequities caused by three and a half centuries of slavery and discrimination. Already, eight MHS graduates have benefited from the program. The $7,500-per-year scholarships are named in honor of Maryville Mayor William Bennett Scott who, when elected in 1869, was Tennessee’s first African American mayor and the publisher of its first Black-owned newspaper, “The Maryville Republican.” Mayor Scott also started the Freedman’s Institute for the education of former slaves. That institute sat where the Maryville Rebels now play football.
Twenty-two years ago, I made a mistake. I thought we had accomplished something big by getting rid of the Rebel flags at Maryville High School. Perhaps we had, but it didn’t go far enough. I should have forced an up-or-down vote by the Board of Education on the Rebel name itself. I don’t know if I could have garnered the three votes necessary to change it, but I should have tried.
The Scott Scholarship is a do-over. It gives Maryvillians a chance to make our high school known across the state not as that stellar but stubborn little institution that can’t let go of a problematic mascot, but as a trailblazer for racial justice like our illustrious former mayor. We can be Tennessee’s first school district to ensure that every African-American student who needs help going to college gets it. And in doing so, we can send a clear signal to our African-American neighbors that — despite America’s past legacy of slavery and discrimination — we are serious about making sure their sons and daughters have opportunities similar to our own.
Buzz Thomas is a retired American Baptist Church minister, attorney, school superintendent and longtime Blount County resident and frequent columnist for The Daily Times.
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