Pekin Community High School District 303

From the high school's founding until the 1981 school year, the football team was officially named the "Pekin Chinks", represented by a red dragon logo, done in part to represent the town of Pekin's relation to the Chinese city of Peking.[2][3] In previous eras the community had almost no Chinese American residents.[4]

In 1974 members of the National Organization of Chinese-Americans took offense to the name and suggested to municipal government employees that the sports team should have a different name. The members asked the mayor and the city attorney to intervene but the response was that they were unable to. The area Chamber of Commerce argued that the community took opposition to the idea of the mascot being offensive.[4] That year, a vote was conducted within the student body to change the name, and the vote ended in a landslide victory for "chinks" at 1,034 votes to 182.[3] In 1975 the Peoria Journal Star stopped including the mascot name in the publication.[4] A second vote received similar results.[3] As time passed additional publications no longer included the mascot name. The school stopped displaying statues of the mascots.[4] In 1980, the school board forced a name change to "Pekin Dragons"; a name that has stayed to the present. By the 1990s, some graduates from the pre-dragon era of the district have expressed a desire for the original name to return.[2][3]

In April 2019, a social studies teacher was allegedly taking part in racist activities. Due to said allegations, the school initiated an investigation into the activities. During the start of the investigation, the teacher resigned. The investigation found many offensive posts made by the teacher on a private messaging board with a group known as Identity Evropa, under the alias "Undercover Academic".[5] On the message board, the teacher reported to have taught their students discriminatory information, however the investigation found no evidence of this.[6][7]