The summer before my sophomore year of high school at the International School of the Americas on the campus of Robert E. Lee High School, I traveled in a large van with an older family friend to Vicksburg, Mississippi. I spent a couple of months on an adventure living in her lifelong friends’ antebellum mansion, falling in love with the Deep South. I fell in love with its traditions, battlefields, food, and most of all, its people.

My memory of our visit to the Vicksburg National Military Park is as hazy as the weather on that humid morning, but after being entranced by the stories of Civil War battles for a full day, I remember buying souvenir flags on sticks, proud of my newfound knowledge about the difference between the Stars and Bars and the Confederate Naval Battle Flag.

The next fall, as San Antonio high school students so often do, I began to regularly attend our weekly football games with my friends. Rambunctious fans who wanted to be heard, we were proud of our school and our team. A few weeks into the season, I stitched my souvenir battle flag – formerly the Lee High School flag as well – onto the back of a white T-shirt and scribbled something about the “rebels” around it before proudly wearing it to school for game day.

Shari Albright, then the director of ISA, spotted me in the hall and stopped me for a quick chat. She reminded me that the school had changed its flag a few years before (something I wasn’t aware of at the time) for a good reason; the Confederate Naval Battle Flag made many students deeply uncomfortable.

Although she acknowledged my right to have it, Albright asked me to understand how proudly wearing the flag might impact those around me. My 17-year-old ears listened the best they could, but I continued to wear the shirt throughout the day and to the game that night. I never wore it again, but I now look back on that decision and can’t help but wonder which of my friends felt alienated from me that day. Worse, I wonder if any of them felt shame or even fear because of the choice that I made to celebrate my school pride and heritage.

Fifteen years later, I still understand the deep connection to and pride for Southern values and heritage. As a proud Lee alumnus, I love and respect my high school alma mater and its traditions. But, importantly, I also understand and greatly respect the brave students who had asked that we consider changing the school’s name so that all students feel welcome and safe on campus. I am not going to weigh the merits of a name change here, mostly because that issue has already been settled. It’s time to figure out how we all move on and teach the current students of Lee High School the most important values that we all share.

As we consider how to move forward as a community, I am reminded of a quote from one of my favorite books, one I read as a young pupil in North East Independent School District: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. … Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” A woman named Harper Lee wrote that in her 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbird.

As I was toying with ideas for new names for the school I love that would make us all proud, Lee’s voice, dripping with Southern grace and twang, came through to me subtly at first, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Why wouldn’t we honor the voice of this late southern hero, who teaches justice and compassion and just so happens to have the same last name as the previous namesake of this institution?  Harper Lee’s name might provide the perfect solution to many of the challenges I have heard around the renaming process.

Actor Gregory Peck and novelist Harper Lee on the set of the 1962 Universal Pictures release “To Kill A Mockingbird,” in which Peck plays the hero. Credit: Tullio Saba / Creative Commons

First, the school would still be called Lee High School. The Lee-Churchill football and soccer rivalries will remain intact. Alumni and current students will all be connected to the name Lee.  Most of the athletic uniforms, many of the signs and even the logo can remain exactly as they are – the bold red letter “L” surrounded by stars that we have all come to know and love over the past few decades. These practical conveniences will mitigate substantially the cost associated with a name change. Most importantly, we will have chosen to brand ourselves with the name of a woman whose courageous voice taught us all as young people the basics of human empathy and dignity.

And as for a mascot, Lee wrote in her recently released novel, Go Set a Watchman, about the narrator’s father Atticus as a righteous advocate and watchman, something of a moral compass for the make-believe town of Maycomb, Alabama. Is there a better vision for what we hope the young people who walk the halls of Lee High School will become?

I propose, then, that as we consider all of the options for a name change, that we consider the Harper Lee Watchmen. We will be celebrating the very best of Southern values like hospitality, compassion, justice, and fairness. And that might even be better than a Lee High School state football championship.

Matt is a proud San Antonian living in North Carolina. He spends his work days at Modern Energy, a private equity firm focused on domestic energy efficiency and international distributed energy development...

48 replies on “How Lee High School Can Still Be Lee High School”

  1. I went to high school at a US government school in Germany so I don’t get a vote. But if I did, I think this idea is genius. Better than the idea I heard at the nail salon yesterday, which is that they were going to re-name it after BRUCE Lee. The young lady sharing this information did not look like she was joking.

    1. This is not a terrible idea, considering the positive attributes he gave to us as a fighter and philosopher. I love that, by chance, I went to an NISD high school named after a US Supreme Court justice.

      1. So Lee High School could be any person named Lee. Even a Lee that might be a serial killer or a Chinese communist. In other words, it’s a school with no identity. So when people unfamiliar with the school like out of towners ask who is Lee High School named after what will we say? Oh, will just tell them , “it’s whatever Lee You want it to be.” This decision by the school board is what we call in Texas “riding the fence.” It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, Should’ve just left it Robert E. Lee.

    2. My son just graduated from Lee and he’s thrilled about the name change. He and his friends were joking about it, but they really love the idea of Bruce Lee High School with Dragons as the mascot!

      1. Yes, and I wonder how much knowledge and respect for America history ( the good and the bad) the boys are aware of. A perfect example of the propagation of ignorance in our youth.

  2. Thank you for the name change ideas, Matt. Changing the high school’s name to just “Lee High School”, with no reference to the CSA general / USA traitor, sounds fitting and cost-effective. I hope NEISD and Texas seriously consider it.

  4. The Harper Lee Watchmen. I like it…except for the “men” part. What will the girls’ teams call themselves?

  5. As it’s a Texas school and a San Antonio one at that, better to choose the name of a local like Tejano patriot Juan Seguin, courier from the Alamo and San Antonio’s first Tejano mayor. While changing it to Harper Lee school may make people who hate Robert E. Lee’s guts feel better, it will also serve to enrage those against the name change and serve to further divide Texans instead of uniting them.

    1. I’m not sure I agree. The whole idea is to keep the name “Lee” so that alumni can still feel connected to current students and campus – even if they love Robert E Lee. I also love Juan Seguin and there are a million worthy, local heroes, but the whole idea is to keep it Lee to honor the fact that the school itself has a rich tradition. Furthermore, there’s a Seguin HS a mere 45 minutes away 🙂

  6. Harper Lee has no reported San Antonio connection and Go Set a Watchman is very controversial. Dr. Amy Freeman Lee, on the other hand might be a more relevant idea and an inspiration for many reasons. Humanitarian, educator, rancher, artist, philanthropist, patron of the arts and so much more. Just throwing it out there. Haven’t given much thought to it.

    1. I think it’s a lovely suggestion. At least one faculty member I know of is also pushing this idea.

      I still love the idea of Harper Lee. She speaks right to the heart of the issues involved and I don’t dock her for not having a San Antonio connection – after all, that wasn’t a consideration for so many high schools around the country or even in San Antonio. I also understand the controversy around the latest book, but I don’t think that the controversy is about content and it doesn’t change the meaning of a watchman. Harper Lee’s name sends a clear message here: let’s learn to see through each other’s eyes and build a school community around the idea of empathy and kindness.

        1. Ok read the obit for Dr Lee and now I’m her biggest fan. Yes, it would be entirely appropriate under any circumstance to celebrate her remarkable life by naming this school or any school in her honor.

    2. I like Dr. Amy Freeman Lee. She is a role model that every student can admire. As to why they would have kept Robert E Lee for so long beyond me. Although, he was a skilled general and apparently had some connection to Texas in Mexican-American War, there is nothing redeeming about him. He was a traitor to the United States of America. We want schools to be named after inspiring people, not traitors. We don’t have schools after Benedict Arnold, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, etc, why should we name them after Robert E Lee.

  7. The whole idea of a name change is bull shit. I was at Lee Jr High and later Lee High School from 59-65. Not once, did we have any racial problems with any group. Granted there were no blacks at the time, but I can tell you if there were, we would have welcomed all with open arms. We all got along, socialized and studied together and were neighbors. EVERY race and creed lived in those areas. As it happened later, blacks entered Lee WITHOUT incident and nothing changed. Only in the 90s when then Principal Bill Fish decided that he would set out to accomplish a life long goal of removing the Flag and rebel symbol, because as a Sam Houston student (I am told) he hated to see the Lee flag and other symbols. He allegedly told friends that “if it was the last thing he ever did, he would get that flag down at Lee”. Somehow he wangled his way to the job at Lee. I fault my classmate and friend Richard Middleton, who became Supt at NEISD during this time, for letting Fish get away with this crap. Richard’s answer to me when I confronted him, was that he was “away at the time” when it happened. NO GUTS, NO BACKBONE to stand your ground is what it was. If you read the history on Robert E Lee, you find out that he was a highly decorated AMERICAN UNION Soldier, that he was Lincolns choice for command of the Union Army, that he owned no slaves and released his Grand Father’s slaves after his death. In addition after the war, he worked hard to reunite America and did many many other things for the good of the country. The Castros allegedly in San Antonio, put students up to circulating petitions to get the name changed several years ago. What right does the board have to go against the wishes of over 6000 petitioners, who were against the name change. NONE! Twice the number against, far exceeded those for the name change. In addition after the vote, the Board now says they were threatened with violence and harm if they did not change the name. Really? That is a major crime that should be investigated by local, state and federal officials. If your offended by something, that doesn’t make you right in the long term of things. Every time some whiny baby Liberal, Antifa, BLM or White Supremacist idiot squawks , we run to appease or assault them or have a riot, whatever. There is a hell of a lot more people who are proud of Robert E Lee High school and its name and tradition and history and Southern heritage than are “Offended” by all of it. Renaming the school doesnt do a damn thing in the long term. Everyone who drives by that school will still know it is LEE HIGH SCHOOL, period. Students and do gooders and activists whose purpose is just to stir up crap and have no real goals and will just move on to the next place where they can raise hell. They live for that and in a lot of cases are paid to do just that. They have no real job or no real life other than to live off the Government they are trying to bring down and draw attention to themselves, for their fifteen minutes of fame. Pretty soon they will be pulling down statues of Martin Luther King, because some group will think he was a pansy who preached peace and unification, instead of burning down buildings and shooting each other. Jesus will be next, then eventually Mosques and other things that “offend” someone somewhere. Because you see, Liberals and militants and useless individuals have to feed off each other to exist. When they get things just like they like them and everything is wonderful, they will become dissatisfied and turn on each other and begin to kill and eat themselves. It is inherent in their DNA and dysfunctional minds. you can disagree and vent your hatred toward me, but deep in the core of your twisted souls, you know Im right because its already happening in the ranks of the demented left. So be it, I love America, Texas and ROBERT E LEE High School.

    1. You might want to read up on race relations and school integration from the 1960s to today. There was a reason there were no blacks at Lee from 1959 to 1965. The open arms you refer to were because of the clubs in hand ready to swing.

      1. I graduated from Robert E. Lee HS back in 1971. At that time there were no Black students attending Lee, although that was to change just a few short years later, as Pres. Jimmy Carter’s Dept. of Health, Educacatioj and Welfare closed down a multitude of schools across the U.S.

        In San Antonio, that school was Phyllis Wheatley H.S. Many of the Black students who attended Wheatley did so because their parents had chosen to live in the neighborhoods that guaranteed their children’ attendance there.

        I was in schools in the Lee district from sixth grade on, and I don’t buy that there were no Black students at Lee due to threats of violence. My younger sister was at Lee when the fist Black students in Lee, which was a year or two after I was drafted. There was no mas protests. The National Guard or police weren’t required to escort them on campus. This wasn’t like Little Rock, when Pres. Kennedy had to intervene.

        I don’t care for people painting my school and fellow classmates with a broad brush just because of the time period and problems elsewhere.

        San Antonio was still a part of the melting pot of American society, with the large Hispanic population that was part of Texas from before its independence from Mexico. Then with the military presence from Ft. Sam, Kelly, and Lackland, a significant number of people of different races and from across the globe resulted in likely the highest percentage of Asian population in Texas being in San Antonio.

        I’ve been out of school since 1971, but still remember a tuba player in the band with me named Pena. Other Hispanics at Lee were named Espinoza, Hernandez, Gonzales just to name a few. Our graduation ceremony had 652 names on the roll. The school enrollment exceeded 2600 students and there was no small number of different ethnic groups represented.

        Lee wasn’t a hotbed of racism during my four years there. I don’t recall a group of junior Klansmen on campus, accompanied by cross burnings on the front lawn. No problems with visiting schools when the teams, bands, or cheerleaders included Black students.

        I hate to see the school board strip Robert E. Lee’s name from the school, my school, because a handful of people are easily offended by the name of one of the greatest General’s in U.S. history. And I’m offended that anyone would try to claim the absence of Black students from Lee was due to outright racism. If someone was to check other schools in the Northside and Northeast Independent School District there were probably several schools without any Black students. Again, many of the Black families had chosen to have their children attend Wheatley.

    3. You’re one hundred percent right, brilliant! I believe British Prime Minister Chamberlain tried the appeasement angle with Hitler and well we all know what happened then. These Antifa, BLM, NAACP, and the rest are opposite side of the same coin comparable to Hitler’s Brown Shirts during the 1930’s, change through threats and violence. None of our politicians have backbones to stand up against these jokers, APPEASEMENT is all they know.

      1. This is why it was important to make the changes so that the people who want to honor US traitors wouldn’t be appeased.

    4. Robert E Lee had a large slave plantation. His father-in-law willed that they be emancipated, but they were not. He threw six in jail for insubordination. When three more of them escaped, he had them tied and whipped them. Read his Wikipedia. Gov Allan Shivers chased the NAACP out of Texas. I think Shivers had something to do with the Robert E Lee name. The exact same year, (1958) with Shivers’ influence another Robert E Lee High School was named in Tyler. There is a nasty story about the Tyler school. It was to be an “all-white” high school. The NAACP filed suit under Brown vs Board of Education and they were ordered to integrate. Instead of following the judge’s orders, Shivers kicked the NAACP out of Texas. Hence many Texas schools remained segregated for many years after Brown vs the Board of Education.

    5. I agree 100%! I am so sad about this. I find no benefit in destroying history. The latest personally involved me and many other grads of ROBERT E. LEE HIGH SCHOOL in San Antonio. Last year they tried to get approval of a name change and it was voted down. We were relieved. BUT it came to the school board AGAIN recently and in a private meeting got the vote 100% to do away with the name. The Rebel flag is gone, the name is gone and I’m sure any reference to the man himself is also destroyed. When we attended Lee, none of us concentrated on Lee’s part in the Civil War. We were not “uncomfortable” attending this school! It was just our school and mascot, our sports teams, our years of school, our introduction to life as an adult. The way it was handled was terrible. Alums living in San Antonio, said it was done in secret. The signatures we gathered, not even considered. They didn’t allow anyone to speak at the meeting. I would like to know why these people can get rid of history because so called professionals are afraid of a lawsuit, bad press, whatever from hate groups. It’s hard to watch.

  9. Great idea Matt. Except the Watchman that Harper Lee wrote about was not the same guy who we loved in To Kill a Mockingbird. Maybe a more fitting mascot would be “The Defender(s).”

  11. Why not honor the first Robert E. Lee name we find in the phone book?

    Re-branding the school with another person named Lee is trivial and idiotic. It reminds me of a Brady Bunch episode when Greg Brady was chosen to be the next rock sensation named Johnny Bravo because he “fit the suit”.

    If we need to spend upwards of $1,000,000 dollars to rename the school, I believe it should be a person who was a former graduate, administrator or teacher from Robert E. Lee – not someone from pop culture, pop history, or someone who happens to have the last name of Lee.

    1. Hi Richard-

      I respect that you think we should use a different name altogether to justify the expense, but I don’t appreciate the offensive and intentionally combative diction. The idea of naming the school after a formidable person in US history who shaped our modern understanding of justice and race relations is far from “idiotic”. The nostalgia that alumni feel for (and connection to) their alma mater is not “trivial”; maintaining the name Lee would, indeed, preserve much of that positivity. Happy to have a reasonable conversation about the merits of any number of ideas, but I honestly don’t think bullying and name-calling are going to get us anywhere.

      1. Granted, calling an idea trivial and idiotic isn’t very nice, but “bullying,” it is not. I’m also a Lee graduate and, by the way, a newspaper reporter who has received my share of negative feedback that has included name-calling that I didn’t appreciate.

        In this case, though, Richard wasn’t name-calling. He called the idea of naming the school Lee anything just to keep the surname trivial and idiotic. And I agree with him. Bad idea. Superficial idea. Seems like you were sitting around thinking of a way to keep the name Lee and Googled and came of with the next-most-famous Lee. Someone, who as far as I can tell, has no connection to San Antonio or or Texas.

        I’m sorry if you take offense to someone disagreeing with you, but I don’t see this as bullying at all. You expressed an opinion that Harper Lee would be a great name for the school. We’re expressing out opinion that it’s a bad idea.

        1. We can agree to disagree. There was no googling involved.

          What we can agree on is that in this moment in history, our word choice is particularly important. I think that’s probably something you realize every day when you write. So when we choose intentionally inflammatory words without justification, we diminish our own arguments and the importance of the topic at hand. When we choose to escalate and work against progress and decent, civil conversation, we do that intentionally and deserve the diminished view of the content associated with said vitriol.

          I’ll leave you with the parting thought I already mentioned above: Many of us are delighted to consider local heroes, in fact, there’s another Lee who many people are supporting (and who I also have come to admire). However, the idea that we MUST name the school after someone local (in fact very few of our high schools and middle schools are), and the idea that Harper Lee is a RANDOM choice (when she is so obviously relevant to this topic) reveals a bias towards hostility that I wish would disappear as we try to actually decide how to move forward.

      2. All this is is a political decision to try and please alumni and the ignorant students at that school, who by the way never knew or were concerned about the name until leftists like that traitor Julian Castro his brother and their mother deep down racists stirred it up with lies. I hope the alumni of ROBERT E. LEE HIGH SCHOOL are smarter than that and will not accept just the name Lee High School.

        1. There have been petitions and calls to change the name for years. I was at Lee over 10 years ago and people talked about it then and even before then. Just because you never heard about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  12. No,No,No. There is only one LEE as far as I am concerned. And that is Robert E. Lee, as far as my school is to be named. Quit trying to save the Liberal school board the Million dollars by giving it a name that does not deserve the recognition and legacy of one of the greatest Generals of this great country. Just keep names of people out of the equation. I say we call it HEROES HIGH SCHOOL. That covers everyone including our great coaches, athletes ,scholars,etc. and the General without stepping on anyone’s toes. Frank Dix class of 77.

  13. Great idea Matt! As a fellow alum of that campus, I’m very happy to see the name change and think it’s fitting to find a Lee name that’s better to look up to than the current namesake. I like the mascot name Defenders better than the Watchmen.

    Amy Freeman Lee is also a great option, not sure what a mascot could be there, seeing as how overall accomplished she was. The Humans perhaps? Maybe even Volunteers, as she seemed to volunteer her time in a great many ways.

  14. So when somebody asks an alumni what High School they graduated from and they respond “Robert E. Lee,” they’ll say “I’ve never heard of that High School. Then the alumni has to go and explain how the name got changed because some snowflakes got offended even though they never really were offended. This name change and all the other BS that’s happening with anything to do with the Confederacy is all feel good politics and does nothing to solve any racial problems.

  15. We talked about changing the name of Robert E. Lee HS in 1969-1970 – some things take a while. Yay! Amy Freeman Lee loved animals. A donkey and a llama stood outside her funeral at Trinity U Chapel. Take your pick, mascot dreamers!

  16. Everyone is so caught up with maintaining Lee as the name so that either they want to remember Robert E Lee and what he represented (Go Rebels!) Or dint want to spend money to change all their monogramed guest towels. How about renaming it after Lee Ruth Davis to honor her surviving the Rosewood Fl massacre in the 1920s (google it). Fitting example of what the original honoring of confederate soilders was all about. Plus it serves as a teaching opportunity, since the some black folks tend to be known by only their first names anyway. For anyone doubting slavery was the issue if the Civil War, read the Texas statement on why they were seceeding. Speeking of massacres, also check out the Nueces River massacre of you want more info on how the noble confederates treated german texans.

  17. Instead of Watchmen, I’d use Mockingbirds. Texas pride instilled as the state bird of Texas, and distaff school squads can use other popular Texas birds for their name–or even Scouts!

  18. I began my schooling at Robert E. Lee when it opened. I went there from the seventh grade through my senior year.
    I am annoyed that they plan to rename the school.
    I will always be a ‘Rebel ‘ and a ‘Volunteer ‘.

    1. You’re proud to be a “rebel” AND a “volunteer”. Why can’t you be proud to be from Lee AND whatever the new name is? You’re obviously ok with change, as evidenced by you being ok with the change from “rebel” to “vol”.

  19. You know, it is unfortunate that slavery was such an epic problem centered and associated with the South. As how slavery in The Americas, is what allowed so many black people to be relocated from elsewhere in the first place. And Slavery took place all around the World! (And, in some places, still is.) Maybe we should focus on that…
    What I find offensive is hearing people say, ‘ that General Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confederate Forces (CSA) was a “Traitor”. How does fighting to protect one’s Home from Invasion by Outsiders, make one a Traitor?! I would expect that most people reading this would find it Highly Offensive if They realized some group (individuals, government representatives, foreign forces) were considering ‘moving in on your ‘turf ‘, in order to impose their ideas, mores or business practices, and expect YOU to accept and support their new changes, like it or not! Yes, cotton, was the prime economy of the South, and slavery was, at that time, the most practical (cheapest) form of labor in haversting that product. Did the North, or Europe for that matter, purchase n support that economy?
    I regress…. but if R. E. Lee was a traitor, fighting for ‘his country’s Rights to Exist’, and BECAUSE the South Lost the War, does that then make any and all of US (proud to be southerners/ Texans, etc) also TRAITORS !!! History, right or wrong, is a valued ‘blanket’ we all should wrap around us to both remember AND LEARN FROM. If we remove parts of our Heritage, then we all Lose. What’s the Old Saying? ” Learn from your mistakes, so as not to repeat them.”
    I graduated from Lee High in ’65, carried the “Battle Flag” into each combative football game against other schools, winning some and losing others. This I did proudly for some six years! Never was, and still hold true, bitter, angry or opposed to any other race, color or difference of opinion by others. Each of us have that Right. I shall RESPECT You, provided, You also RESPECT Me.

    Let us KEEP our History, but strive to Better ourselves by constantly Improving our Attitudes towards one another, and accepting what has been with what shall be.

    PEACE

    1. When I took high school American History in 1967, we had completed the part on the Civil War, when a question was asked and and a class discussion followed. We had seen the Wats riots an Martin Luther King’s were on TV. The question was “ how could they have named the school Robert E. Lee considereing the slavery issue and the then current race issues?” The teacher’s response was that Lee had been pardoned and it was legal. I have thought about that for all these years and in my opion, the answer was inadequate. Today I think they should have made a better choice than to name a school after a loosing general. I am well aquainted with loosing generals because I grew up on Westmoreland Dr.

      I have always avoided the “which high school?” conversation because someone might judge me to be a racist and my high school flag to be the same. The name change confirms my concerns. I hope that the alumni files a class action law suit for the damage the name has to our ruputations.

  20. Why not be like New York City – PS101? No need for mascots or nicknames – somebody might be offended. Just go get your education (minus the offensive history), and then retreat to your own little cocoon at the end of the day. Problem solved, right?

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