An effort to give a Portland high school a new mascot has been paused due to concerns that the leading candidate connotes lynching.
A committee of students, staff, and community members elected to replace Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School’s Trojan with an evergreen tree, but when the matter came before the school board, Director Michelle DePass suggested a correlation between the evergreen and a racial history of lynching.
“I’m wondering if there was any concern with the imagery there, in using a tree … as our mascot?” DePass asked the renaming and mascot committee during a March 30 meeting, according to the Portland Tribune. “I think everyone comes with blind spots, and I think that might’ve been a really big blind spot.”
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Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an early leader in the civil rights movement who became the namesake of the formerly named Woodrow Wilson High School earlier this year, was a co-founder of the NAACP who wrote and advocated against lynching.
In February, a mascot survey was sent to students and staff, who submitted 420 different nominations. An evergreen tree became the front-runner.
“Evergreens are characterized by the life-giving force of their foliage, the strength of their massive trunk, and the depth of their roots — in an individual tree and as a forest of trees,” Ellen Whatmore, a teacher and mascot committee member at the high school, said while reading from a resolution. “They provide shelter and sustenance. They have histories that preclude us and will continue in perpetuity after we are no more.”
One committee member said the group discussed how the evergreen could be connected with lynching but still found it to be a positive image.
“We did talk about it, but we were looking at the symbolism more as a tree of life than a tree of death,” Martin Osborne, a committee member who is black, told the school board. “You could certainly take it either way, depending upon your position.”
Osborne noted that lynching trees “typically are not evergreens,” and he added that the idea of using evergreens as mascots “had nothing to do with the horrible history of lynching in the United States.”
School Principal Filip Hristic said Wells-Barnett’s family supported the district’s move to invoke Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s legacy but was reportedly sympathetic to DePass’s concerns.
“We take this seriously, and I definitely want to follow that commitment to protect, preserve, and promote the legacy of Ida B. Wells,” Hristic said, noting that the committee hadn’t spoken with Wells-Barnett’s family about the mascot.
DePass encouraged the renaming committee to speak with the late civil rights leader’s family members to get their thoughts on the mascot proposal. The school board will take up the mascot vote at its next meeting.
“Lynching is a really difficult topic to talk about, and as a sole black board member, I invite you, beg you, implore you to join me in disrupting the situations [and] practices that are racist. I can’t do this by myself,” she said.
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Representatives for the high school did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
