Name-a-Day Calendar, November 14: Alcorn State Braves

Page 8 of 365

Chosen in: 1994

Chosen by: University administration after protests against their previous nickname

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Alcorn State’s sports teams have been known as some form of “Braves” going back several decades, including when the university was still called Alcorn A&M. The original name was “Scalping Braves”. This name was evidently chosen at some unknown time when the university still played in the small college ranks. When they built a new basketball arena in 1975, they called it the Scalpin’ Grounds. They moved up to Division I two years later and made no effort to rebrand. But by the early ‘90s they’d gotten complaints from a litany of organizations, including Alcorn State alumni groups, and eventually the pressure became too great to ignore.

The university made a slight (but important) concession, dropping “Scalping” from the name of both team and arena in 1994.¹ At the same time, they also stated without a doubt that they intended to continue calling themselves the Braves. In 2005, the NCAA announced that any schools using unsanctioned Native American monikers or imagery in their athletic branding would not be allowed to display them in the postseason. This included the name “Braves”, but the NCAA also ruled that name to be acceptable as long as it was detached from all Native American imagery.² Alcorn State had done this, so the name stayed.

Alcorn State University was the first black land grant university established in the United States. Medgar Evers graduated from the school in 1952,³ when their sports teams were still likely known as the Scalping Braves. It boggles the mind that the administration (and, presumably, much of the alumni base) of a university with such a rich history of fighting racial inequality was just okay with their athletic branding employing casual racism to such a stubborn degree. One could argue that they still are.

Read more about Alcorn State’s athletic branding crisis in relation to a similar dilemma at the University of North Dakota here.

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1. They renamed the arena for legendary former coach Davey Whitney, then Whitney unretired in 1996 and coached the team for seven more years in an arena named after himself. Pretty baller move.

2. One other school also received this exception; more on that on December 5.

3. You can find these facts in the first three sentences of the school’s Wikipedia page.