Many locals mistakenly assume “Colonel” refers to the town’s 1700s namesake, Col. William Brattle. Instead, the school introduced it 70 years ago in recognition of its new home on the community’s old Civil War campgrounds, according to Joe Rivers, a social studies teacher and a leader of the Brattleboro Historical Society.
The Colonels were no more than a name until the 1970s, when the school adopted the same white-goateed plantation owner mascot then used by the University of Mississippi. That led some students to wave Confederate flags at games and, in 1998, burn an effigy of a Black doll at a homecoming bonfire. source