For decades, students at Robert E. Lee High School in Tyler, Texas, have sung their alma mater at pep rallies, assemblies, sporting events, and other functions.
Robert E. Lee we raise our voice in praise of your name
May honor and glory e'er guide you to fame.
…
And so the times will not divide us for united we'll be
Our Memories will bind us to Robert E. Lee.
But not everyone cherishes the song. Joralen Mauldin, 16, a black junior at Lee, read the lyrics her freshman year and cringed. “It’s kind of like an unspoken rule for black students … [we] don't like the song because you know that it's honoring General Lee,” she said. “A lot of black students … don’t [memorize] the words.” Mauldin, a member of the high school’s drill team, has relegated the song to background noise and learned to tune out the verses. A school building named after the Confederate general, though, is harder to ignore.
[For more on this story by MELINDA D. ANDERSON, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...rate-general/545186/]
Photo: Two passersby take photos of a pedestal where a statue once stood.
A pedestal that had held a statue of Robert E. Lee, which was removed from the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas.
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