First: Thanks to the over 800 folks who have signed this petition....I'm asking you to keep the torch burning.....Special thanks to the Town of Walpole board volunteers who have signed, and a special thank you to Ms. Kari Denitzio, who recently became a member of the Walpole School Committee.

A huge effort has been made to promote the Rebel name in Walpole.

The attempts at "whitewashing" the Rebel name do not address the situation that Social Studies Teacher Tim Giblin experienced outside of the Town of Walpole, and out-of-state...

No matter what the pro-Rebel crowd does, they cannot mitigate these facts:

That Rebel Mascots rose up during the Civil Rights Era in response to Federal Mandates related to the Desegregation of Schools...

and Walpole's highly honored former Football Coach John Lee coached the "Rebels" at a racist-segregated High School in Memphis, Tennessee during the Civil Rights Era.

From the film "PRIDE" which was shown at the Walpole High School Film Festival in 2016....Minutes 20:15-21:15

Tim Giblin
Varsity Boys Track Coach
Social Studies Teacher
Walpole High School
“..On the paraphernalia that my teams receive we do not put the name REBELS or Rebel Imagery on it. There are two reasons for this:
First was as a younger man I had the opportunity to play in a band and to travel the country, and at a show in Newark New Jersey, I was wearing a Walpole Rebels shirt.
I was accosted by four men in a Burger King who were African-American and didn’t really like that imagery. That wasn’t a pleasant experience.
And then subsequently at a show in North Carolina I was wearing a Walpole Rebels shirt around the hotel. There were a number of other bands staying at the hotel. I was invited back to a party in one room with a bunch of people who saw my shirt and thought I shared a similar ideology. Invited back to a room and it turned out it was a White Power group and they were listening to the country artist Johnny Rebel. You can google his material and you can see how badly offensive that is…”