(CNN) — A Texas school district is holding an auction to get rid of a warehouse full of Confederate-themed memorabilia left over after the renaming of a high school originally named after Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Robert E. Lee High School in San Antonio had its name changed last year after complaints about honoring the Civil War general. It’s now called the Legacy of Educational Excellence High School — or LEE for short.
The North East Independent School District says it will build a museum at the school that will house some of the items, including a statue of the Confederate general and copies of mosaics created by students, but there’s not enough room for everything that’s accumulated over the decades.
In a Facebook post earlier this week for the auction, the district said more than 1,000 items would be available, including yearbooks from the 1960s, floor mats, plastic tumblers, T-shirts and dozens of folding chairs with a cartoon general on the seat. One photo shows a giant, headless statue of Lee.
The district said that schools would normally recycle such items or throw them in the trash, but it decided to hold the auction because it received a lot of requests from alumni wanting mementos from the school.
Some alumni apparently were upset that memorabilia they donated to the school will be sold to the highest bidder, instead of returned.
“Once the items are donated to the district, they do become district property,” spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor told CNN affiliate KSAT. “We’ve had so many items donated over 50 years, it really wouldn’t be feasible to look up names, posts (or) take people’s words for it.”
The district won’t include items with specific students’ names on them.
The online auction will open Monday and run through July 30.
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