A group of students at Lee High School in Huntsville have started a petition to change the school's name to honor the first black student who integrated Lee High.

The petition, which had about 700 signatures as of Sunday, is posted on Change.org and will be delivered to the Huntsville City School board and Mayor Tommy Battle.

Lee High School first opened in 1958, four years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawed school segregation in America. Its mascot is a five-star general and school colors are blue and gray.

According to the petition's writers, "the naming of the school was a clear statement that Lee High School was for white students only and that Huntsville City Schools had no intention of complying with the Supreme Court's ruling."

But what began as an all-white school in the 1950s is nearly 70 percent black in 2017. The school hosts the high school arts magnet program for Huntsville City Schools.

"Students, teachers and community members deserve a school named after someone that all, not just some, can admire," say the petition's authors.

They want to rename the school Paulette Turner High School, after the school's first black student. Turner first entered the school on Sept. 2, 1964. She later spent a career as an executive at IBM.

The petition is the latest in the public debate surrounding the naming and renaming of schools in Huntsville's predominantly black areas of town.

Former Huntsville Superintendent Casey Wardynski, center, talks to Lee High students who protested a proposed name change. About 250 students walked out of class on Nov. 4, 2011. The school board later restored the name. (The Huntsville Times/Robin Conn)

In 2011, former Huntsville superintendent Casey Wardynski floated the idea of changing Lee High's name after the new school building was built. He backtracked after a public outcry and protests from Lee students, alumni and parents, including black students.

At the time, Wardynski admitted he'd made a "gargantuan mistake" in trying to rename the school, in light of the strong public sentiment against it.

A similar protest cropped up in 2013 around the naming of Jemison High School, a new school formed after the closure of Johnson High School. Although Jemison was named for America's first black woman in space, some Johnson alumni and members of Huntsville's predominantly black North Huntsville community were upset that they'd had no input in the name change.

The change was voted on by the school board, without asking community members what they wanted, said those who opposed the name change.

The Lee High students who created this new petition want to also swap the school's colors from blue and gray - which allude to Confederate colors - to blue and white. They want the school's mascot to be the Trailblazers rather than the Generals.

The school has long had ties to Confederate lore and iconography, they point out.

The original Lee High Dance Team was called the Confederettes. The school's first newspaper - no longer published - was named the Traveller, after Lee's horse, who was also the school's first mascot.

"Despite any positive characteristics of Robert E. Lee, he was a slaveowner and a white supremacist," say the petition's authors. "Anyone and anything associated with the Confederate cause, in general, have since been associated with hate, racism and intolerance, none of which have a place at Lee High School.

AL.com is working to reach out to petition organizers and has contacted the school board, and will update this story with additional information as it becomes available.