Robert E. Lee High School — Where Lynyrd Skynyrd Got Their Name

Robert E. Lee High School at 1200 Kerle Street in Jacksonville, Florida, is where the core members of Lynyrd Skynyrd attended school in the mid-1960s and where they encountered gym teacher Leonard Skinner — the man whose name, phonetically mangled, they would make famous worldwide. Skinner repeatedly disciplined students for violating the school's hair length rules, and Ronnie Van Zant, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Bob Burns were among those he targeted. When the band needed a name to replace the succession of temporary ones they had used since forming in 1964, they chose a sardonic tribute to their tormentor, spelling it to sound like his name. Skinner later embraced the connection, occasionally introducing the band at concerts and reportedly displaying a signed gold record in his real estate office.

The band that became Lynyrd Skynyrd coalesced from the Jacksonville neighbourhood around Wesconnett and the Robert E. Lee High School catchment area. Ronnie Van Zant, the band's founding vocalist and driving creative force, grew up in the working-class Jacksonville community of Shantytown, and the toughness and directness of that environment runs through the music he made. Gary Rossington and Allen Collins, the two guitarists whose interplay became the band's musical signature, also grew up in the area and met at school. The 'three guitar army' sound that distinguished Lynyrd Skynyrd from their contemporaries — two or sometimes three lead guitarists playing simultaneously — was developed through years of rehearsal in Jacksonville garages and community spaces before the band achieved any commercial recognition.

Robert E. Lee High School was renamed Westside High School in 2020 after the school board voted to remove Confederate figures' names from Jacksonville schools. Leonard Skinner himself died in 2010. His obituaries noted the Lynyrd Skynyrd connection prominently — an unusual afterlife for a gym teacher. The school building remains in operation as Westside High School and is not a formal heritage site, but it is well documented in Lynyrd Skynyrd's biography as the point of origin for one of rock history's most unlikely band names.