The Times Record reports that about 100 people turned out for Fort Smith lawyer Joey McCutcheon’s rally to save the Rebel mascot and the “Dixie” fight song along with other trappings of the Confederacy at Fort Smith Southside High School.
KFSM’s coverage shows the crowd. It isn’t big. But it is angry.
Presumably the Fergit Hell! crowd will muster similar numbers for a School Board meeting Monday night at which a vote is expected on finally phasing out he Confederate symbolism, which was intended from the school’s construction in the 1960s to reflect embedded resistance to school desegregation in the South. The school itself remained de facto segregated for years.
Photo coverage shows no black people in the crowd. The crowd included “heritage” defenders from Greenwood.
Coverage quoted McCutcheon:
“I don’t want our symbols changed,” attorney and 1981 Southside graduate Joey McCutchen said. “I know it’s part of who I am. Our students don’t see it as a racial symbol and never have.”
Indeed, slavery, the fight to preserve it and the enduring battle to wave the banner high ARE a part of what the South was and continues to be, to its discredit. But any sentient person has to call BS on the assertion that nobody sees the flag as a racial symbol.