N.C. high school recalls yearbook over Confederate flag photo

A North Carolina high school’s yearbook has been recalled and will be reprinted after officials found out that a Confederate flag made its way into a photo collage printed on the cover.

Thomasville City Schools said a 1968 photo of former students holding a Confederate flag appeared on the cover of this year’s Thomasville High School yearbook as part of the historical theme, “A Blast to the Past.” The picture was a part of a larger collage that included photos from previous yearbooks, school officials said.

School officials said the yearbook had only been distributed to a handful of students and staff before the “inappropriate picture” was noticed. Superintendent Dr. Catherine Gentry said the district collected all the yearbooks with the photo and will destroy them, The District reported.

“Swift action is being taken to remove the picture from all yearbook covers and provide new books to students and staff,” the district said in a statement. “We apologize for such an egregious error and vow to have a system in place to prevent such mistakes from happening again.”

Ms. Gentry told The Dispatch that the yearbook is created by students and a staff adviser.

“I’m not sure what the reason was, whether it was missed, whether it just did not stand out during the proofing process, there could be a million reasons,” she said. “It was not something that was caught by the students or the teachers or that stood out to them.

“I don’t have any sense that it was malicious or intentional,” she added. “I also don’t want to blow this off as something that is not important, because it is important.

“I think it’s very much a controversial and sensitive issue,” she said. “I think across the country, any superintendent or principal would say to you that that is a kind of trigger thing and we would not want to have something like that in our yearbook, regardless of where you are in Thomasville or anywhere else.”