Ed Komenda|Reno Gazette Journal
LAS VEGAS – Less than an hour before sundown, the men wrapped UNLV’s bronze Hey Reb! statue in a yellow sling and rigged it to a forklift.
It was time for the 1800s-era Westerner with thewide hat and huge mustache to go.
It was the night of June 16, two weeks after a police officer and protester were shot in separate cases as thousands of demonstrators standing against racial injustice marched through Las Vegas in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Hey Reb! was shrouded, loaded onto a truck and returned to the university donors, far from his homeoutside the alumni building – a pedestal that is now empty.
That empty space has spotlighted a long-standing divide over UNLV’s troubled mascot history: Is “Runnin' Rebels” imagery rooted in harmless school spirit or Confederate lore that harkens to Manifest Destiny and the forced removal of Native Americans?
UNLV professor denounces Hey Reb!
Javon Johnson, director ofAfrican American and African Diaspora Studies program, is glad to see the beady-eyed pioneer gone.
"Either way it goes, it’s either ‘I hate black people’ or ‘I hate Indigenous people’ or ‘I hate both,'" Johnson said."The people who say it’s not are people who are, A.Racist; B.Callous and lazy in their analysis; C.Haven’t done the reading; D.Don’t care to."
Previous coverage:UNLV removes Confederate-themed 'rebel' statue in wake of protests against racial injustice
Designed as a jab at the northern University of Nevada inReno, UNLV's"Rebel" mascotwas originally a wolf wearing a Confederate Army cap and uniform. They called him"Beauregard" –named after the Confederate general who ordered the first shots of the Civil War.
"UNLV'scolors are the colors of the Confederate Army, and the school UNLV initially seceded from is UNR, who wears blue – Union colors,” Johnson said. “The first mascot was named Beauregard. It’s just too many coincidences."
Petition seeks Hey Reb’s Return
After Hey Reb’s exit, a Change.org petition surfaced in support of UNLV’s “Runnin’ Rebels” name and the statue’s return.
“The Hey Reb mascot is defined as a rebel and a mountain man. A westerner, a pathfinder, and a rugged individual,” wrote petitioner Craig Lake,who could not be reached for comment. “This group recognizes this rugged mountain man as an integral part of Las Vegas and University history and bands together and requests his statue to be returned to the UNLV campus, and Hey Reb and the Rebels remain a part of UNLV now and in the future.”
Related:Twitter reacts with mixed opinions to UNLV removing Hey Reb! statue from campus
Carrying more than 7,000 signatures, the petition denounces UNLV’s ties to Beauregard and Confederate imagery.
“Although unintentional in intent,” it says, “those original depictions are no longer used and rightfully removed.”
But Johnson finds the rugged pathfinder imagery problematic, too.
"If you’re going to say it’s about mountaineering and pioneering,” Johnson said. “I counter with, ‘OK, so Manifest Destiny is fine with you?’”
‘An Indian Killer’
Manifest Destiny is the 19th century idea that the United States is destined by God to expand across North America, aphilosophy that led to the forced removal of NativeAmericans and other groups from their homes.
In 2019, Native American UNLVstudents pressured the school to remove the Hey Reb!statue tocreate a welcoming atmosphere for Indigenous people. Ryan Boone,a member of the Walker River Paiute tribe, told the Las Vegas Review Journalthe statue is hostile to Native Americans like him.
“On a campus that’s supposed to be ‘different, daring and diverse,’" he said,"we have this statue of an Indian killer."
Throughout the 1980s, Hey Reb! walked around with a feather in his hat andcarrieda long gun.
In UNLV tied to Confederates?
In the wake of the2015 shooting massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church inCharleston, S.C., former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid told reporters that higher education officialsshould look at changing UNLV’s mascot.
UNLV then commissioned a 60-page report that found no connection to theDixie South or Confederate ideology despite a Confederate battle flag appearing on the masthead of the "Rebel Yell" student newspaperand the football team's helmets.
"The appending of Confederate symbols to the already existing Rebels identity was of course unfortunate and to some extent immature," the report said. "The symbolism at Nevada Southern was nonetheless confined to the idea of resisting the political power of northern Nevada, and had nothing to do with any sort of segregationist attitude regarding African Americans, a point that is woefully under-publicized."
Rebels they were, the study said, but racists they were not.
Read the full report here:
Rewriting history
Nevada historian and UNLV professor Michael Greenappeared in the report, offering context about the Silver State'splacein post-slavery, college-town America.
“There was a great deal of unthinking going on.People did not stop to think about what a Confederate wolf means,”Green said in an interview."If history teachingsdid not ignore the oppression of people of color, it minimized itand it often attempted to justify it. The history we study and how we study it thankfully has come a long way, butit’s still got a long way to go."
UNLV's mascotstudy references an interview withBill Casey, quarterback ofthe UNLV football team that hadConfederate Battle Flags on their helmets.
"He did not make any association of that flag with any sort of racist or segregationist attitude," the reportsaid. "He said that he considered the association of a west coast team such as UNLV with a southern racist impulse 'a stretch'..."
The school removed the Confederate logos in 1976 but retained the Rebels nickname.
Debate about whether the school should let go of its Rebel rootsand allow something new to grow isoverdue, Green said.
"Hey Reb! is a symbol in different ways to different people, but it's also a cultural symbol, and cultural symbols demand that we explain what they mean," Green said. “The obligation we have to history is to rewrite it. When you rewrite history, you’re not eliminating it, you’re rethinking it.”
Will Hey Reb! return?
Hey Reb’s future remains unclear.
"In recent conversations with the donor, we mutually agreed it was best to remove the statue and return it," UNLV President Marta Meanasaid in statementafter the statue’s removal. "Over the past few months, I have had discussions with multiple individuals and stakeholder groups from campus and the community on how best the university can move forward given recent events throughout our nation. That includes the future of our mascot."
The USA TODAY Network asked to talk to UNLV President Marta Meana about what’s next for Hey Reb!She was not available for an interview.
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To Johnson, ignoring the past keeps peoplefrom moving toward an inclusive society.
"Google is real," Johnson said. "Do the reading, and if you don’t want to do the reading or – if after you do the reading – you still say it’s not racist, then nothing I was going to tell youwas going to change that anyway."
There is no way UNLV can return Hey Reb! to campus, Johnson said.
"You can't remove it and recognize theissues, and then put it back," he said.
Contributing: Associated Press.
Ed Komenda writes about Las Vegas for the Reno Gazette Journal and USA Today Network. Do you care about democracy?Then support local journalism by subscribing to the Reno Gazette Journal right here.
