Denver South High School is changing mascots after students rallied to shed the Johnny Rebel image of a Confederate soldier that has long adorned the historic school.

Instead, the mascot will be a griffin, a beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion.

It resembles the 3.5-foot gargoyle perched on the roof above the main entrance, built with the school in 1924 as its symbolic protector.

"The times have changed and so must the mascot," South student Donovan Hilton told school board members on Thursday, after presenting them with petitions signed by hundreds of students and staff members.

"People say the times have changed, and no one thinks of it negatively," said Hilton, 16, who is president of his junior class. "But when typed into a Google search engine . . . the name is synonymous with images of the Ku Klux Klan and other images that are completely and unacceptably racist."

Hilton, who is of mixed ethnicity, was among those leading a student walkout last spring to protest the symbol of the Confederate South in the Civil War, an image inlaid in the foyer of the school across from Washington Park.

That means the school's nearly 1,400 students walk across Johnny Rebel every time they enter the building.

Nearly 70 percent of those teens are minorities.

South Principal Bill Kohut, who has been at the school for 22 years, said student concerns about the Johnny Rebel image have surfaced every year. After the spring walkout, he allowed students to hold a contest to design a new image.

Student Council members selected three from among the 25 entries and asked for their classmates to vote on the winner.

Thursday, Hilton and other students, along with Kohut, presented the new image to board members and asked for funding to cover the Johnny Rebel images on the school floor and in the auditorium. They also asked to replace the Johnny Rebel images that hang in Denver's 10 comprehensive high school gyms. Total estimated cost is $15,000.

"We cannot get rid of this racist symbol on our own," Hilton said. "We don't plan on erasing the history of South. . . . We simply feel it is time to move on."

Board members granted the request. Kohut said he hopes to complete the changes by fall.