The South Garland High School logo and mascot will be replaced because many people view them as racist.
For more than a half-century, South Garland High School teams have been known as The Colonels. In early years, the school's logo and mascot pretty clearly represented a Confederate Army soldier and the Confederate battle flag was either carried by the mascot or the emblem was incorporated into school artwork.
In recent years, those overt Confederate symbols were replaced by a more generic look that did not specifically depict the Confederacy. But even those more vague representations have been viewed as racist and in August the NAACP asked the Garland school board to replace them.
Last night, trustees agreed and Superintendent Ricardo Lopez was in support. But Lopez did not back a request by some to change the name of the school because they view the word South as racist. Lopez says the word does not refer to the Confederacy but simply to the school's geographic location on Garland's south side.