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Tana

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Everything posted by Tana

  1. Just went to this website and I really like it just as it is. The superimposed photos make it very clear as to where things were once located. Tana
  2. Alex Rigsby: I have a few photos at my website: www.tanasreminisce.com and I always include references when I can. Those might give you a place to find more links, etc. tana
  3. devonhart, I am not the least bit offended. I enjoy discussions such as these. And, of course, we all carry prejudices from our pasts. I, like you, was taught not to use racial slurs while some around us were doing so. I was offended if I heard these things being said even way back then. Thank you for responding. Tana
  4. Hi, I am a new member of HAIF and am looking forward to being a part of your forums. I was a Westbury Rebelette from the summer of 1961 through the spring of 1963. I want to respond to this post because I feel very strongly that we who got to choose our mascot, our colors and our fight song as new students at a new school in the very early sixties had absolutely no intention of being racists. We were rebels because we were underdogs. I certainly never ever thought of the Rebel Flag in the way that it is denigrated today, although I do now have some understanding of why it is. I was never a racist. The fact that we were a white school was simply a fact, not a statement against other races. The fact that we were rebels was a matter of pride in our school. It was meant in a pure sense -- a rebellion against the other schools who would be clearly "out to get us." We embodied the spirit of the rebel, the rebel of almost any kind, but that was certainly symbolized by the South in the times of the Confederacy. We were told that we HAD to attend Westbury and many of us had already expected to graduate from the school where we had spent our sophomore year -- Bellaire High School. Thus, there was an instant and built-in rivalry between Westbury and Bellaire. We felt very strongly that we had to stand up for ourselves as the students of a new school in HISD. In 1961, no one thought anything about the Confederacy as a bastion of racism. It was a bastion of individuals who had a philosophical difference with the North, primarily because of the economy of the South. Of course, later the Confederate flag came to mean something else entirely and I venture to say that not one of us who started Westbury High School would want to choose the Confederate flag as part of our daily lives today. We were indeed a bunch of white kids because no black kids lived in our area. And I had one Hispanic classmate who was a good friend. He was the only Hispanic that attended Westbury at that time. So my point is that one should consider the times before being critical of the whole situation. We did not hate black people. We hardly knew any black people. I never had a class with a black student until I was in college. We were not racists. We just wanted to be rebels. Tana
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