Arkansas district looking to retire 'Johnnie Reb' mascot

(AP) — An Arkansas school board is considering retiring a high school's "Johnny Reb" mascot after the shooting deaths of nine people inside their historic black church in South Carolina reignited a debate nationwide about the use of symbols of the Confederacy.

A Fort Smith School Board committee voted Tuesday to send a measure to the full school board that would eliminate the Old South anthem "Dixie" as Southside High School's fight song by the start of the next school year and phase out the rebel mascot by the 2016-17 school year.

School Board Secretary Rick Wade said several board members had informally discussed the issue after pictures of Dylann Roof, the white man charged with shooting and killing the pastor and eight members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, surfaced with him holding a Confederate flag.

Wade said he graduated from a segregated Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida, where the mascot was the Generals and lived through the Civil Rights movement.