After school board vote, Beaufort High alumni say fight over mascot and colors not over
A motion to switch an emblem on Beaufort High School’s football field back to its original flying eagle, a symbol that has significance for the school’s history, was denied in Tuesday night’s school board meeting.
A close-up version of the eagle has been in use since at least 2019, Beaufort High School principal Charity Summers previously told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. A motion requesting that the flying eagle be restored as the sole mascot and logo along with the school’s colors was made by school board member, Will Smith, and seconded by Earl Campbell.
The motion, which some board members said needed to be “clearer,” was shot down by a 3-5 vote with two members abstaining from voting.
Alumni from the school’s first desegregated class that graduated in 1971 initially raised the issue at a board meeting on March 1 denouncing the newer logo as an “insult to history.” The issue was brought back up in Tuesday’s meeting with more members of the class of 1971 speaking out.
Smith, who graduated from Beaufort High School in 2003, said Wednesday that he will be working with the class of 1971 to get the original flying eagle restored.
“As the community stated, I won’t stop,” Smith said. “I will continue to pursue this fight.”
Steven Green, a graduate of the school’s class of 1971, said Wednesday the issue is a “whole lot more than just being a mascot.”
“It might have been a little disappointing, but at the same time I understood that the motion was put forth in a way that some of the members said was a little bit too vague,” Green said. “I did come away feeling that they really heard us.”
‘That was history’
In the late 1960s, three schools in the area — Beaufort High, St. Helena High and Robert Smalls High — morphed to form one school as part of national desegregation efforts. Beaufort High was a predominantly white school at the time, while both St. Helena High School and Robert Smalls had more Black students.
Each school contributed a part of its identity. Beaufort High gave its name, St. Helena gave its flying eagle mascot and Robert Smalls contributed the colors green and white.
“That was history. ... We were all merged together,” said D. Jeanelle Drake, a 1971 graduate of Beaufort High.
Drake, now 69 and living in Detroit, said she experienced no racial divides among her classmates at the time. The main cause of tension was between Robert Smalls and St. Helena students who had been rivals in football, she said with a laugh.
“I think people probably expected race riots, and it was not like that at all,” Drake said. “They (teachers and parents) really didn’t know how this transition would happen, but we had a great year. ... We did the unthinkable. We came together and we made it work.”
‘Not the end’
The graduates first noticed the school’s traditional flying eagle was not on the football field while attending their 50-year reunion in 2021. They were even more upset when they found that the school band had black pants with their uniforms instead of sticking to just green and white. To them, the changes to the mascot and colors were an affront to history.
Said Drake: “It was an insult not only to us and what we went through but to Robert Smalls and St. Helena High School.”
Green said giving up is not an option because doing that would be saying that history is not important.
“I hope you know this is not the end of it,” he said in the meeting.
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