Welcome to another episode of the Willoughby Hills podcast!
On today’s episode, I speak with comedian, author, and podcaster Akilah Hughes. You may know Akilah for her book Obviously: Stories from My Timeline, her YouTube channel, her amazing Twitter/X and Instagram feeds, or her nearly two year run hosting the daily news podcast What a Day for Crooked Media from 2019-2021.
But today, Akilah is here to discuss her latest podcast Rebel Spirit, which investigates the history of how her high school in Northern Kentucky came to adopt the Rebel team name and Confederate symbols in the 1950s and retains the name to this day. In the show, Akilah travels home on a mission to remake the Rebels into the Boone County Biscuits.
If some of this sounds familiar, it’s because I too went to a high school with a Rebel team name and Confederate icons.
I wrote about the experience last year in my newsletter, at the time thinking that my experience was singular to my town. Rebel Spirit has helped me recognize that adopting Rebels seemed to be an intentionally racist strategy that many white suburban schools were using to make a stand against desegregation and Civil Rights. It also made me realize that my thoughts and feelings about being a Rebel weren’t individual, but that my experience was replicated in countless schools across the country.
In this conversation, Akilah and I share some stories about our shared Rebel experiences and discuss the challenges with making even small, incremental changes. We also talk about larger diversity and inclusion efforts, including navigating enjoying a visit to Disney Parks while also acknowledging the harmful narratives at play (something that I’ve also explored in this newsletter).
I highly recommend listening to Rebel Spirit. The story is rooted in Akilah’s Kentucky high school, but also gets at larger discussions around sports team mascots, representation, and the struggle for justice for all people.
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Related Episodes:
119. Richard Frishman and B. Brian Foster on Ghosts of Segregation
98. Smithsonian Curator Bethanee Bemis on How Disney Impacts American Culture
122. Author Richard Rothstein on America's Deliberate Segregation
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131. Podcaster Akilah Hughes Investigates Rebel High Schools