As Confederate statues are toppled across the country, a Bay Area high school is scrubbing names and images with Confederate roots from its walls and sports uniforms.

San Lorenzo High School is making its latest attempt to do the right thing. And the idea of what’s right has changed with the decades at the school, just as it has all across the U.S.

This was a school, after all, that openly mocked chattel slavery by auctioning students in blackface for school fundraisers. The auctions were a yearly event — until 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated

But its mascot remained — a tribute to the Confederate soldier in the Civil War, the four-year clash over the rights of Southern plantation owners and politicians to retain ownership of millions of enslaved black people.

The Rebel Guy, a cartoon that resembled a mustachioed Western prospector, was a descendant of the school’s original mascot, Colonel Reb, a white man with a cane and goatee who was retired in 1997 as better judgment ruled. To me, Rebel Guy looked like a Confederate soldier turned Jim Crow-era landowner.

A year ago, students successfully fought to get rid of the Rebel Guy. This year, all that was left was the Rebel name. But for some black and brown students at San Lorenzo High, the Rebel name was inextricably linked to our country’s history of hate.

In June, the San Lorenzo Unified School District board voted unanimously to remove the Rebel name.

Naliyah Martinez-Truso, a recent San Lorenzo High graduate, was among a coalition of students who pushed for the Rebel name to be removed from classrooms and taken off sports uniforms and school apparel.

The process often turned heated, as students found themselves educating teachers on why Confederate images distressed them.

“I didn’t want students, especially students of color, to have to attend a school where their ancestors were mocked and where they felt uncomfortable coming to school,” said Naliyah, 17, who will attend UC Santa Cruz in September.

Yet despite the win, the Rebel name is still featured prominently on the school’s website and Facebook page.

“It’s not the same as pulling down a statue,” Penny Peck, the school board president, told me. “It’s a lot more complicated, and there’s so much other stuff to do.”

The school is making progress. The large sign that read “Rebel Pride” has been taken off the gym wall, and the Rebel name that was on the front of the school has been painted over.

“Some of those bigger things that one would see as they drove by, those have been removed,” Peck said. “But there’s so many things that they have this long list, and they’ve been working on it over the summer.”

This is a strained time in our country as we grapple with the undercurrent of racial hatred that has bubbled to the surface. Last week in Charlottesville, Va., white nationalist groups clashed with protesters over the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was there that a car allegedly driven by a suspected neo-Nazi barreled into a crowd of counterprotesters. One woman, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed, and 19 people were hurt.

The president, who has emboldened white nationalists with his dangerous rhetoric, sees the removal of Confederate monuments as “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.”

It’s no wonder that since he was elected some Bay Area high schools have had to deal with racist graffiti and racial slurs aimed at black students.

San Lorenzo High did the right thing, because there’s no mistaking what the mascot and Rebel name represented.

The school’s yearbook was even once called the Confederate, and until 1993, the school’s football team had Confederate flags on its helmets.

“The whole idea, when you’re surrounded by the Confederate flag and other symbols of the Confederacy, that they’re having a slave day, even if it’s for charity, is just unconscionable,” said Peck, who graduated from San Lorenzo in 1972.

“We decided the Rebel name really was just so hurtful and problematic that the school should remove that and think of a different nickname.”

A’kiyah Jones, a 15-year-old sophomore who campaigned with students to get the Rebel name removed, will return to school feeling accomplished. But because the Rebel name is still prominent on the school’s website, she said there’s more work to be done.

“To me, it feels as if they really didn’t care about our voice, because it’s still up,” A’kiyah said. “I feel like they have to know that we’re serious. We’re not going to stop.”

Peck hopes the student-led process to select a new mascot, which could take several months, will unify the school.

“We want all students in school to feel respected, honored, defended against violence,” she said. “It’s going to be a lot of work over the next year to help people understand why we made this change.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr