Posted on 11/14/2003 8:05:07 AM PST by Rebeleye
A Hampton woman has started a petition to change the names of Robert E. Lee Elementary and Jefferson Davis Middle schools, saying it's inappropriate and psychologically damaging to send a predominantly black student population into buildings named after Confederate leaders. ...suggests that Lee be renamed Maya Elementary School in honor of poet Maya Angelou and that Davis be changed to Beth-Day, after social activist Mary McLeod Bethune and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
(Excerpt) Read more at dailypress.com ...
"It's terribly unfair to these young kids," said Erenestine Harrison, author of the petition. "I'm not trying to erase the South of Lee and Davis. Leave them on the statues and battlefields."
Harrison, who holds a psychology degree and works as a substitute teacher in Hampton, says she wants the schools to bear names of people she considers better role models for children.
Several school officials said they had heard no suggestion of renaming the Hampton schools.
David Leech, principal at Davis Middle School, said the psychological damage argument doesn't wash for him, and he would like to see it proved.
"I wouldn't buy that at all," Leech said.
The school's academic achievement shows the students are well adjusted, Leech said. Davis Middle School has received full accreditation, based on Standards of Learning scores. Although the school did not earn the federal Adequate Yearly Progress designation last month, nearly all groups of students scored well above the benchmark for the standard.
Lee Elementary School is provisionally accredited and earned the AYP designation.
Gen. Robert E. Lee, a native Virginian, led the Confederate armies during the Civil War, a conflict partly attributed to the South's desire to maintain slavery. Jefferson Davis served as president of the Confederacy.
That's relevant, Harrison said, because 94 percent of students at Lee Elementary and 66 percent at Davis Middle School are black.
Marece Mayo said that during the 13 years she was principal at Lee Elementary, parents occasionally raised concerns about the school's name. (This school year, Mayo transferred to Moton Elementary School.)
"It would just surface every now and then," Mayo said. "I would tell them that at that point we wanted to focus on making sure the kids pass SOLs. The name of the school has nothing to do with performance. It's what goes on inside of the school."
The issue of renaming schools has also cropped up in other districts in Virginia and nationwide. A month ago, the Richmond School Board struck down a proposal to change J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School, named after a prominent Confederate cavalryman.
People also have pushed for new school names in Florida, Mississippi and Alabama. New Orleans has changed the names of 26 schools named for slave owners, including George Washington, and replaced them with the names of well-known blacks.
Jerrold Roy, a historian at Hampton University, said arguments over honoring people like Lee and Davis tread on sticky territory.
"You have to consider where we are," Roy said. "We're in the heart of the Confederacy. One has to recognize that these people were indeed heroes in the South. You can't dismiss it as part of the South's history."
Harrison collected about 300 signatures earlier in the fall by canvassing Hampton neighborhoods and approaching people in disaster-relief lines after Hurricane Isabel. She hopes to collect 2,000 signatures before presenting the petition to the Hampton School Board.
She also distributed about 6,000 fliers for a last-minute write-in campaign - hinged on changing the schools' names - for the 2nd District seat in the state Senate, the race that Hampton Mayor Mamie Locke won. Harrison does not know if she received any votes.
Keith Whitescarver, a professor in the School of Education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, acknowledged the relevancy of Harrison's efforts.
"Naming a school is a significant symbolic marker," Whitescarver said.
Schools named after people like Lee and Davis are often an anachronism dating back to school segregation, Whitescarver said. School boards during that era were often cognizant of naming black schools after prominent black figures, and likewise for white schools - but what seemed appropriate half a century ago often looks very different in today's integrated schools, he said.
The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, but a decade passed before all Southern states started to integrate students.
Davis Junior High opened in 1961, the year the first black student in the district was admitted to an all-white school. Lee Elementary was dedicated in 1966, two years before Hampton City Schools were fully integrated.
A Hampton native, Harrison attended segregated schools including George P. Phenix High School, named after a former president of Hampton Institute, the forerunner of Hampton University. The last all-black class graduated from Phenix in 1968.
Harrison suggests that Lee be renamed Maya Elementary School in honor of poet Maya Angelou and that Davis be changed to Beth-Day, after social activist Mary McLeod Bethune and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
"This is not going to cost any money, or very little money," Harrison said. "The benefits we would receive, just in terms of the goodwill from African-American parents and the children would be well worth it."
Sure. Look at all the benefits of naming any major street, "Martin Luther King Boulevard".
So she objects to naming schools after prominent generals who were opposed to slavery?
Then why aren't more people happy?
I wish people like Harrison would put their energy to constructive uses such as improving the curriculum, working with teachers, and helping students get a better education.
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