Cross Keys High School will now be home to the Phoenix, thanks to the DeKalb County school board’s approval Monday of a mascot change.
The school’s former mascot was “the Indians.”
Members of the school’s community voiced concerns that the mascot was an offensive stereotype and an “unacceptable name for Indigenous people,” district staff wrote in a memo to the school board. Roughly 90% of its students are Hispanic, the memo added.
There’s been a small wave of schools changing their names or mascots in recent years in an attempt to avoid racist ties. The Atlanta school board agreed in 2020 to change the name of Henry W. Grady High School to Midtown High School. Grady was formerly a managing editor of The Atlanta Constitution who critics say espoused racist views and died in 1889. In 2021, Turner County High School in South Georgia changed its mascot from the Rebels to the Titans.
In professional sports, the Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians have changed their names to distance themselves from stereotypes of Native Americans. The Atlanta Braves and the Kansas City Chiefs, who won their second consecutive Super Bowl in February, continue to face pressure to do the same.
The idea first came up to change the Cross Keys High mascot more than a year ago, and a committee met four times to discuss community input and options for changing the mascot. Of the 1,700 community members — more than half of them students — who voted on the issue, only 14% said the mascot should stay the same.
The Phoenix won over the Chameleons and the Rattlers. The school will work with students and local artists to design the new logo, board member Whitney McGinniss said Monday.
Cross Keys High School is slated to undergo major renovations in the coming months, and any costs associated with changing the mascot, like new signage, will be absorbed into that project, she added.
Less than 1% of students in the state’s third-largest school district are American Indian, according to the most recent state data.
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