Rebel Spirit

society, culture, comedy, history · EN-US

In Season Two of Rebel Spirit, Akilah Hughes picks up where her battle to change her high school’s Confederate mascot left off and quickly realizes the problem was never just a mascot. Shifting from her high school still clinging to the “Rebels” name to the long fight over a Jefferson Davis statue in the Kentucky State Capitol, Season Two expands into a sharp, funny, and deeply reported investigation into how America decides what, and who, it chooses to honor. Along the way, Akilah speaks with politicians from both sides of the aisle about their support for change, historians who help contextualize the fight to remove Confederate monuments, and artists who are part of building monuments their whole community can be proud of. All in an effort to answer this season's big question, if we’re willing to tear down racist monuments, why is it so hard to replace them with something better?