From - http://www.jdedman.com/weblog/2003_12_14_archive.html
HIGH SCHOOL MASCOTS: The Edgfield County School Board in South Carolina has replaced the Strom Thurmond High School Southern aristocrat mascot with a blue-tic hound after complaints from students. However, the board allowed the high school to keep its "rebel" nickname in the wake of criticism. The State, the daily newspaper in Columbia, S.C., reports:
A group of parents and others fighting to keep the mascot have threatened to sue on the grounds the board violated a 1973 court order involving the integration of the school. Under the court order, white students gave up “Dixie,” the Confederate flag and a bayonet-wielding Confederate as school symbols. The settlement kept the Rebel nickname and allowed the colonel mascot.
As I observed in my law review article [PDF] on the Confederate flag and the First Amendment, litigation involving a school's official adoption of Confederate symbols is not ucommon. See generally Crosby v. Holsinger, 852 F.2d 801 (4th Cir. 1988) (finding that school officials did not violate students' First Amendment rights by eliminating "Johhny Reb" as the school mascot); Banks v. Muncie Cmty. Schs., 433 F.2d 292 (7th Cir. 1970) (finding no constitutional violation in the school's official use of Confederate symbols); Augustus v. Sch. Bd. of Escambia County, 361 F. Supp. 383 (N.D. Fla. 1973) (finding that school's use of the Confederate battle flag as the official school symbol "seriously interfered with the effective operation of a unitary system at this school.").