All across the country,
young African-American students attend schools that pay homage to those who
fought to keep their people enslaved.
Following
last month's racially charged shooting at a historically black church in
Charleston, South Carolina, there have been renewed calls to limit the display of
the Confederate flag and
rename public spaces named for Confederate leaders. At least 195 public schools
around the country have names that memorialize Confederate soldiers, leaders or
politicians, according to a Huffington Post analysis of National Center for
Education Statistics data from
the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years.
This list is likely
incomplete. There are probably other schools named for lesser-known leaders. We
included schools we could conclusively determine were named after notable
Confederates -- for example, because the school used a general's full name or
its mascot was related to the Civil War -- not simply those that included a
Confederate soldier's last name. However, we did count schools named after
towns, counties or other locations that were themselves named after a Confederate.
Below is a map breaking
down the locations of schools named after Confederate leaders.
We also looked at the
demographics of the over 125,000 students in these schools, which includes a
disproportionately high number of nonwhite students. More than half of students
who attend schools named after Confederate leaders are black or Hispanic. About
22 percent of students who attend these schools are black and 31 percent are
Hispanic.
Since
the Charleston shooting, some community leaders and advocacy groups have taken
a stand against public spaces that celebrate the legacy of Confederate leaders.
A San Diego assemblywoman is calling on her local school board to change the
name of its Robert E. Lee Elementary
School. Former San Antonio mayor and United States Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro is also calling for a name change for Robert E. Lee High
School in a San Antonio district.
"There
are other, more appropriated individuals to honor,
and spotlight as role models," Castro wrote on his Facebook page about the
issue last week.
In
recent years, a number of school boards and districts have taken steps to
eliminate racist symbols from
their campuses and change the names of buildings named after racist
historical figures. In 2014, a school board in Jacksonville,
Florida, voted to change the name of Nathan B. Forrest High, which had been
named for a Confederate general and
Ku Klux Klan leader.
A petition that promoted the name change received
over 160,000 signatures.
"I don't want my
daughter, or any student, going to a school named under those circumstances.
This is a bad look for Florida -- with so much racial division in our state,
renaming Forrest High would be a step toward healing," said the petition,
written by a local parent. "Now is the time to right a historical wrong.
African American Jacksonville students shouldn't have to attend a high school
named for someone who slaughtered and terrorized their ancestors one more
school year."
But there are certainly
pockets of resistance. Members of a school board in Virginia have spoken out
against changing the name of a district school named for Robert E. Lee.
"When you have so many
years of history associated with
a school you went to, when you change the name they feel like they lose
that," said Ron Ramsey, Staunton School Board chairman in Virginia,
according to The News Leader. "I can see how it could make it harder to
trace school history and athletics when they have a new name."
It will likely be many
years before the over 190 schools that honor leaders who fought for slavery
change their names -- if that day ever comes.
Report from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
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