In Tyler, Texas, just a mile along E SE Loop 323 from the district office of right-wing Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01), is 62-year-old Robert E. Lee High School. The high school’s 16-year-old award-winning cross-country runner, Trude Lambe, has refused to ever again wear a jersey with “Tyler Lee” emblazoned on the front and has confronted the school district board to change the name of her school. Earlier this week several hundred people, both black and white, turned out to demonstrate outside the board meeting while she spoke. The story has made a splash in the national media:
CNN: Read the powerful letter this high school student wrote on why she won't wear the name of her school -- Robert E. Lee -- on her jersey
… Trude Lamb, an incoming high school sophomore, has won countless medals for her school's cross country team. But with each victory and celebratory picture, she is painfully reminded of the name that runs across her chest -- Robert E. Lee.
Now, she's saying no more and is demanding change.
In a recent letter to the school board, Lamb wrote that she would no longer wear the school's jersey, which is emblazoned with "Tyler Lee." Tyler stands for the Tyler Independent School District located in the city of Tyler, Texas, and Lee stands for the school's name, Robert E. Lee High School. …
… Lamb added that Lee is glorified even more in the school's alma mater, which in part says, "Robert E. Lee we raise our voice in praise of your name. May honor and glory e'er guide you to fame."
"What has he done for him to be praised like that?" Lamb said of Lee, a Confederate general who owned slaves. …
… A petition calling for the renaming of the school has over 10,000 signatures and some have also called for the name of another school in the district -- John Tyler High School -- to be changed. John Tyler, the tenth US President, worked to create the Southern Confederacy, according to the White House. …
Part of her letter:
… I am from Ghana, Africa where slavery first began. I came to America in 2014. I have stood in the dungeons of the slave castle and seen the three foot urine and feces stains on the walls where my brothers and sisters were kept. I've seen the tiny hole at the top of the ceiling where they would throw food in to the captured souls. I've walked through the "Gate of No Return" where over 12 million of my brothers and sisters were kidnapped never to return back to their home. I have worked the very fields and fetched water for my family from the very places my people were kidnapped.
I love and enjoy the sports I play at REL. I can't be playing sports, supporting, and going to a school that was named after a person who was against my people right here in the United States. He owned slaves and didn't believe people like me were 100% human ...
People magazine: Student-Athlete at School Named After Robert E. Lee Says She Won’t Wear Jersey with His Name on It
… Lamb, who immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana in 2014, appeared before the school board on Monday to read a powerful letter in which she announced her decision to no longer wear her school jersey while competing. …
...Lamb’s efforts have helped inspire a new social media initiative among students called
We Won’t Wear the Name, which features photos of student-athletes who have also chosen not to wear jerseys, with large Xs drawn over the “Tyler Lee” name.
“Everyone knows what it stands for, and having to wear that and having to say we run for this person is just unreasonable,” one of Lamb’s fellow students told CBS/CW affiliate KYTX.
Hundreds of people gathered outside Monday’s meeting to protest, and many wore shirts that read, “the time is now,” according to CNN. ...
CBS 19: Tyler Metro Chamber of Commerce working with students to change Robert E Lee High School name [Note this is the Chamber of Commerce for black businesses in Tyler.]
But when questioned by the Tyler paper, the board chair said a lot of "we'll think about it" without making any commitment to do anything — even to discuss it anytime soon:
... “We heard the speakers and, you know obviously, it is something that is on a lot of people’s minds and hearts, so we sat there just like we are supposed to do and we listened and will be processing their words and their statements over the next, I don’t know how long, because we have to look at our calendars and see what works so we can actually talk about it as a board.” ...
Some background
In 1958, all-white Robert E. Lee High School opened and quickly adopted the Confederacy as its theme: “Rebels” were the names of the sports teams, “Dixie” was the fight song, the girls’ precision dance drill team that performed at football halftimes were called the “Rebelettes”, the band uniforms had a Confederate battle flag on the back and the band majorettes had flags on their chests. In addition, the “Lee Gentlemen” (boys from prominent families) carried a 20’ x 30’ Confederate battle flag to the football games and other major events, and REL Rebel football players entered the field by running under the flag. This flag was the second largest in the world, only bested by the one at the University of Mississippi. In addition, the “Lee Guard,” seven students, dressed in replicas of the uniforms worn by a North Carolina Confederate artillery unit under General Lee’s command, manned a replica cannon and fired it in celebration after every REL football touchdown.
In 1969, Robert E. Lee High School was partially integrated by allowing a few black students to transfer to Lee. In 1971, confrontations erupted, centered around these students who objected to the racist imagery everywhere and especially to being forced to be part of it (like black football players having to run underneath the Confederate battle flag to enter the football field). Another particularly hurtful example: when students sang the school song at pep rallies, the latter part of the line “red is for courage and white for purity” was sung twice as loudly as the rest of the song. Another: for the Senior Boys Dance, held off-campus, some of the boys dressed in blackface to greet the attendees.
Here’s a 1971 picture of the flag. [Interesting side point: One of the Gentlemen is Mike Luttig who became a very conservative judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. He was almost appointed to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush (the seat that John Roberts now holds) except he showed a bit too much integrity (or independence). After that, Luttig became the General Counsel for Boeing until May 2019.]
Detailed Timeline
This excellent and detailed timeline, Robert E. Lee High School, race, and segregation in Tyler: a 130-year timeline, provides a clear explanation of how the name and theme of the high school were chosen as a defiant and racist response to efforts to desegregate the Tyler schools. Here are a few brief excerpts:
1950s… Tyler makes national news as Texas officials launch a court fight here to counterattack legal assaults on Southern segregation. The state lawsuit comes two years after the N.A.A.C.P.’s historic win in Brown v. Board of Education, amid a wave of integration lawsuits in Texas and across the South. The Tyler court ultimately bans the N.A.A.C.P. from the state of Texas. That ruling will come just before Tyler school officials decide to name their new white high school after Robert E. Lee. ...
After a decade of lawsuits and foot-dragging that culminated in 1972 with more severe confrontations that brought police on campus for part of the year, the Confederate theme was changed and integration implemented by closing the black high school, Emmett Scott (named for a pioneering black educator), and integrating the two white high schools:
1970s… After years of delay by white school officials, immediate desegregation will be imposed on Tyler schools by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice. The judge will be hated by many white Tylerites — and considered a hero by many blacks residents — for also forcing out Lee’s Rebel mascot and Confederate regalia and ordering fair elections of cheerleaders at John Tyler High. But one symbol will remain: the school board rebuffs pleas from black students and parents to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School. ...
The most recent attempt to change the name was 45 years later in 2017.
2017
In mid-August, Tyler Hispanic minister D.G. Montalvo announces on Facebook a campaign to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School. He tells local media that the recent violence over Confederate statues in Charlottesville, Virginia, offers Tyler an opportunity to address racial tension and heal divisions. “It’s the right time,” he says. On Instagram and SnapChat, current students at Robert E. Lee hotly debate the issue.
On Aug. 21, more than 300 people — a bigger crowd than any current school board has seen — pack the monthly board meeting to speak for or against changing the name of Robert E. Lee High School. ...
And the board did not change the name.
Maybe some national attention will help the Tyler school district board finally make a different decision this time.
Here’s another summary of the history from the Tyler Morning Telegraph: Robert E. Lee High School's history reveals complicated past involving Confederate imagery
And another interesting article from 6 years ago about Trude Lamb’s adoption from an orphanage in Ghana: Adopted siblings to experience first Christmas in U.S.