PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Over the years a Dixie Hollins High School in Pinellas County has made a number of changes. Removing the confederate flag which once flew over the school and most recently changing its rebel mascot that resembled a confederate soldier.

But now a student group is asking for the school to take thing a step further and change the name of the school.

Those students started a petition on Change.org calling the ties to the name of the school racist and hateful. 

For Sevelle Brown III that’s exactly what the school meant for him when he attended in the late 1960’s. He described one of his first experiences at the school.

“On day one in school when we went to auditorium for the first assembly my freshman year. That’s when I was scrutinizing everything as I walked through the door of this new environment,” he said. “The next thing I noticed the cheerleaders and the principal was having everybody to stand and sing, I wish I was in Dixie. “

Brown said when he refused things only got worse.

“The white students kept telling me n-word stand up. Stand up n-word. And finally called the principals and the deans came over and they came over and intervened and moved everybody out of the way and asked me to stand up. And I told them not in this lifetime I wont be standing to Dixie and much less will you get me to ever honor Robert E. Lee, your mascot. So at that point I was escorted and thrown out of the auditorium and banned from all assemblies for an entire year,” he explained.

Brown said he’s hoping current students reach out to former students like him to get a first hand account of just how bad things were for black students at the school.

 “We actually had students in 71, 72 climb the flag pole and try to bring down the rebel flag or anything that had confederacy on it. They would always make excuses about it’s not named after the south Dixie, it’s named after the superintendent,” Brown said. 

But Brown says the confederate flag, rebel mascot and daily degrading treatment black students endured for decades, made the name Dixie Hollins synonymous with hate. He said Hollins family or school leaders didn’t do enough to change that. 

“You had all these decades where you have sat by and the school board, every last superintendent, y'all have sat by and allowed the merging of the confederacy and the symbols of the confederacy to be one with the name Dixie Hollins,” Brown said.

Hollins' great granddaughter Jen Cox said for years she didn’t want people to know she was tied to the name Dixie Hollins. She recently started researching how to change the name of the school when she found the student’s petition online. 

“My feeling and what I’ve talked to people and my family about is, words have meaning and it matters. And so despite our grandfather, from what we know, being a egalitarian, he was named something that represents hatred and so let’s get on board with removing that. It causes pain to our culture; it causes pain to the students,” she said. 

Hollins is known for being an educator who donated land to the county to build schools on. It’s a legacy Cox said she hopes isn’t lost in all of this. She’s hoping that students, both past and present, will consider at least keeping her great grandfather’s last name on the school.

“I feel extreme pain and shame that we live in a culture that is unbelievably racist,” she said. “And I would agree the word Dixie is absolutely tied to everything that he (Brown) talked about. And his experience is heartbreaking and unfortunately really common,” she said. “The name Hollins has nothing to do with that word but honestly at the end of the day if the students want to take it further I would support that.”

District officials say the principal can’t just change the name himself. Students actually have the power to decide what name they want the school to have and what they want their mascot to be. The principal met with some students already and plans to meet with more once school starts back in the fall to discuss what changes will be made.