Alums not giving up in fight to save traditional Beaufort High School mascot, colors
The Beaufort County School Board hopes to find a solution to a debate that has simmered for months — recent changes to Beaufort High’s school colors and flying eagle mascot that has angered some alumni.
To the alums, the controversy is about more than school spirit — it’s about preserving history and tradition.
“I went to Beaufort High School, the eagle came from St. Helena; that has no significance to you (the board) because you’re not affiliated, you have no heart for it and you’re just doing a job,” said Mary Moyd, an Army veteran and Beaufort High School graduate during the June 21 board meeting. “You made a decision that affects all of us.”
To students, it’s about change, and having a voice.
“My position with the alums is that you can’t strong-arm the students of today,” board Chairman David Striebinger said Friday. “You need to educate them ... you have to give them the same voice that you all had back in ‘71. People listened to you, you have to listen to today’s students.”
At its next meeting Tuesday, the board aims to take steps to memorialize the history of the school that saw Beaufort High School, Robert Smalls High and St. Helena High morphed into one school as part of desegregation efforts.
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Striebinger said a few possible solutions involve researching and getting the history up on the school’s website and going into further detail about the school’s formation at its freshman orientation so that incoming students are aware of the history.
Graduates from the school at the time of desegregation between Beaufort High School, which had predominantly white students, Robert Smalls High and St. Helena High, which had predominantly Black students, said the students came together and made compromises in an agreement that was documented. Each school had to give up something of its own — be it a name, colors or a mascot — in order to accept that of the other schools.
The students decided Beaufort High would get to keep its name, Robert Smalls High School give the colors (green and white), and St. Helena High offered up its mascot, an eagle.
“When you have things taken away from you all your life, after a while even things that are minute you start fighting for those things,” Moyd said. “That’s not minute, you are erasing history ... The eagle is important to me.”
The point of tension for alums has been the addition of accent colors of black and gray added to the school’s band uniforms and the uniforms of other athletic teams. The alums also take issue with various representations of the school mascot strewn about the school on T-shirts, flyers and, most recently, on the football field that they say does not represent the traditional flying eagle.
This move was even criticized by the school’s Assistant Principal Herbert Glaze in March because the two predominantly Black schools were being forgotten while “the school is still [called] Beaufort High.”
‘It meant something’
“It was an insult not only to us and what we went through but to Robert Smalls and St. Helena High School,” said D. Jeanelle Drake, a 1971 graduate from the school, in a previous interview with the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Since at least March, alums say they have flooded board members’ email inboxes asking for a solution. They have flocked to board meetings to speak out about what the colors and mascot mean to them and, more importantly, what they mean as a part of history, and they don’t want to see changes.
For them, anything short of removing the accent colors and restoring the original flying eagle is wrong. The document that alums said outlined the agreement between the three schools now is nowhere to be found within the district’s archives, they said.
“We honor the eagle,” Charity Summers, the school’s principal who retired this summer, previously told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “Various clubs use different representations of an eagle.”
The new eagle, a logo that now sits at the center of the football field, was redesigned in early 2019. It features a more “menacing” look that current students prefer, school board members have noted in previous meetings.
For months, the Beaufort County School District has gone back and forth to discuss possible solutions to the issue. Board member Will Smith suggested at a meeting May 3 that they paint over the current logo on the field.
This and other previous proposals were shot down by board members, mostly because of the uncertainty over how much it would cost to switch all the logos.
Striebinger said it’s the board’s intention to memorialize history, not erase it.
To her and her fellow alums, Moyd said “the eagle meant something.”
“I talked about that when I was in the military. ... I fought for my country and I’m going to fight for Beaufort High’s colors and mascot to remain the same,” she said.
