Author Topic: Confederate school names stir debate  (Read 125 times)

JTSimon

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Confederate school names stir debate
« on: December 27, 2003, 07:15:11 AM »
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HAMPTON, Virginia (AP) -- At Jefferson Davis Middle School, a civil war of words is being waged over a petition drive to erase the name of the slave-owning Confederate president from the school.

Opinion is mixed, and it's not necessarily along racial lines.

"If it had been up to Robert E. Lee, these kids wouldn't be going to school as they are today," said civil rights leader Julian Bond, now a history professor at the University of Virginia. "They can't help but wonder about honoring a man who wanted to keep them in servitude."

That argument isn't accepted universally among Southern black educators, including the school superintendent in Petersburg, where about 80 percent of the 36,000 residents are black. Three schools carry the names of Confederates.

"It's not the name on the outside of the building that negatively affects the attitudes of the students inside," Superintendent Lloyd Hamlin said. "If the attitudes outside of the building are acceptable, then the name is immaterial."

It is difficult to say how many public schools in the 11 former Confederate states are named for Civil War leaders from the South. Among the more notable names, the National Center for Education Services lists 19 Robert E. Lees, nine Stonewall Jacksons and five Davises. J.E.B. Stuart, Turner Ashby, George Edward Pickett each have at least one school bearing their name.

For some, these men who defended a system that allowed slavery should not be memorialized on public schools where thousands of black children are educated.

The symbols and the names of the Confederacy remain powerful reminders of the South's history of slavery and the war to end it. States, communities and institutions continue to debate what is a proper display of that heritage.

Students in South Carolina have been punished for wearing Confederate flag T-shirts to school.  ;D The town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, permanently lowered the state flag -- which has a Confederate emblem in one corner -- to recognize "the pain and suffering it has symbolized for many years." And the Richmond-area Boy Scouts dropped Lee's name from its council this year.

In the most sweeping change, the Orleans Parish School Board in Louisiana gave new names to schools once named for historical figures who owned slaves. George Washington Elementary School was renamed for Dr. Charles Richard Drew, a black surgeon who organized blood banks during World War II.

In Gadsden, Alabama, however, officials have resisted efforts to rename a middle school named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early backer of the Ku Klux Klan. And a school board in Kentucky adopted a new dress code that eliminates bans on provocative symbols including the Confederate flag.

The naming of schools after Confederate figures is particularly rich with symbolism because of the South's slow move to integrate. Many schools were named after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954 but before the departure of whites left many inner city schools majority black.

"Now whites are complaining that they are changing the name of Stonewall Jackson High School," says Fitzhugh Brundage, a University of North Carolina history professor who is writing a book on "black and white memory from the Civil War."

While far from always the case, the naming of some public schools after Confederate generals was a parting shot to blacks emerging from segregated schools.

"It was an attempt to blend the past with the present but holding onto a romanticized past," Jennings Wagoner, a U.Va. scholar on the history of education, said of the practice of naming schools after Lee, Jackson and others. "It was also a time of extreme racism."

Erenestine Harrison, who launched the petition drive to rename Jefferson Davis Middle School, attended Hampton's segregated public schools. She moved north in 1967 and was struck by the school names upon her return seven years ago to Hampton, a city at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Educated as a psychologist, she has worked in the city schools as a substitute teacher.

"If I were a kid, especially a teenager, I would be ashamed to tell a friend that I went to Jefferson Davis," said Harrison, 55. "Basically, those guys fought for slavery."

But Henry Kidd, former Virginia commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, sees efforts by Harrison and others as a "chipping away, piece by piece, at our history."


http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/12/26/confederate.schools.ap/index.html
 

Trauma-san

Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2003, 07:34:25 AM »
Emotions cloud their intelligence.  The war wasn't about Slavery, although many people think of it that way.  The end of slavery was a repurcussion of the end of the war, but the war was more about individual state's rights, and creating a union.  

Stonewall Jackson, etc. weren't fighting solely for slavery, they were fighting for their culture, and for the honor of what they considered their real allegiance, their state, not their country.  

Also, none of these schools mentioned still harbor resentment towards minorities, or treat minorities in any different way than they treat whites, because every single southern state has passed civil rights bills that make that kind of action illegal.  The name on the outside of the building contrasted with the actions on the inside of the building show just how the south has grown, and it would be a travesty to erase the names of these great men who helped shape the south.  
 

JTSimon

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Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2003, 07:58:00 AM »
lol the South was fighting for individual state's rights to keep slavery forever.

 

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Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2003, 10:34:15 AM »
Emotions cloud their intelligence.  The war wasn't about Slavery, although many people think of it that way.  The end of slavery was a repurcussion of the end of the war, but the war was more about individual state's rights, and creating a union.  


Many southern leaders said straight up that the civil war was for slavery. The reason we learn that the civil war was more was because it was the north that used this as an excuse to get more recruits. Most recruits did not care to fight to free slaves, so Lincoln was intellegent enough to have other reasons. Hell, Gangs of New York was a movie about how Irish didn't want to fight in the Civil War. Teh Confederated vice president was quoted as saying "Of course this war is about slavery. We are the first nation that admits white surpemicy, and we practice this for the world to take example." I might got a few words wrong, but that's almost word for word. The reason the south left the union in the first place was because they felt it was wrong that slavery was not expanded to the west. Once they realize that slavery was not expaining, they knew that they were out nuimber and started fighting for states rights so that they can have control of slavery. After all, Lincoln was in the party that was anti-slavery, so they needed to protect their slave rights from the federal government. Before that, the south used the federal government to protect their slave rights. That's why the civil war.
 

HIPPI

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Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #4 on: December 27, 2003, 02:19:18 PM »
Not really on topic, but Lincoln didn't free any slaves with his Emancipation Proclamation. It was one of most bullshit acts in our history. He stated that all slaves in the Confederate States were now free, BUT the Confederate States proclaimed itself a seperate country. He can't make laws for another country, and if they were to continue to practice slavery, which of course they did, Lincoln wouldn't be able to do shit about it. He didn't mention the "border" states because he wanted them to join the Union, so slavery was still going on in some of those states. LOL. The Emancipation Proclamation freed ZERO slaves. It was just a political move, to gain support, without alienating anyone out, which is a smart move by him, but it didn't accomplish what it claimed to have.

 

Citizen-Y

Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2003, 06:39:14 AM »
Powers, you a Rockets fan?
 

JTSimon

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Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #6 on: December 28, 2003, 07:11:55 AM »
Powers, you a Rockets fan?

I'm a Clippers/Rockets fan because they both were San Diego teams.

Oh and I'm Anti-Laker fan ;D GO KINGS
 

Citizen-Y

Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #7 on: December 28, 2003, 07:23:23 AM »
Powers, you a Rockets fan?

I'm a Clippers/Rockets fan because they both were San Diego teams.

Oh and I'm Anti-Laker fan ;D GO KINGS

Wow, except for the Clippers thing I like everything else you said :)
 

JTSimon

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Re:Confederate school names stir debate
« Reply #8 on: December 28, 2003, 07:48:04 AM »
Cool

can't we at least get the Clippers back  ;D


Rockets Nickname:
Rockets was chosen in a contest due to San Diego's motto,  "A City in Motion" in addition it was the  manufacturing site of the Atlas rockets, used by NASA.

Clippers Nickname:
Named following a contest which brought 14,000 entries, in reference to the city's history as a harbor for Clipper ships and the Star of India which was still harbored in San Diego.