Posted on 12/26/2003 9:21:31 PM PST by El Conservador
HAMPTON, Va. - 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 Statistics 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. The town of Clarksdale, Miss., 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, Ala., 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 (news - web sites) 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 (news - web sites), sees efforts by Harrison and others as a "chipping away, piece by piece, at our history."
Make of that what you will...
You are quite correct that freeing slaves was not the primary, or initial, motivation of the Federal government in the War Between the States. However, it is also a fable to deny that the primary motivation for Southern secession was the protection of the institution of slavery and the protection of their agrarian economy.
Many in the Confederate military had admirable records before the WBTS (or, as I like to call it, the War for Southern Independence). Many in the Confederate military made a difficult choice between their home State and their Country. It should be remembered that the concept of the American "nation" was not as understood by those who lived in the 1850's as those who lived after the WBTS.
Slavery was an unfortunate aspect of the Nation's history, but to fail to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of the slave-holding Founding Fathers, Framers of the Constitution, and other Southerners who lived prior to the WBTS smacks of political correctness.
Those today who rail against everything related to the CSA not only misunderstand the history of the country, but they also forget the intent of Lincoln's second inaugural address.
Not only is the picture presented highly inaccurate, but it is not presented in light of the pre WBTS political climate, nor within the social context of the day.
Socialist teachers and their dupes are being used to further foment divisiveness in our culture by teaching our children a grossly oversimplified fable in lieu of history.
The root of the war is economic, slaves were only a part of the overall economic reasons the South chose to secede.
That Robert E. Lee, West Point educated and offered command of the Army of the Potomac, chose instead to fight for Virginia, perhaps knowing full well that his family lands would be forfeit (now Arlington National Cemetary) bespeaks the conflict of loyalties present. That he is reviled by some as a traitor only indicates which side won.
Many patriots were hanged as traitors during the Revolution, and are only well-remembered because their side ultimately prevailed.
To do anything other than gloss over the reasons for this nation's formative conflicts would require teaching why those conflicts occurred.
To do so would expose the current government for what it is--way off base, Constitutionally bankrupt, thieving, and totalitarian compared with the rule of the British.
Economics alone would spark revolt when students learned that the colonists revolted over a total tax burden of three percent..
With empahsis on self-esteem, and the denial that the guy who cleans the toilet is as important as the guy who designs it (Ya want a dirty toilet?), the loss of self-esteem in finding out that most of our ancestors milked cows, picked (whatever crop), and farmed for subsistence or even profit, whether they owned the land or not just might be devastating.
It is far easier to present a fable of 'haves' and 'have-nots' engaged in some pseudo-proletarian clash. It fits better with the Socialism being infiltrated into every aspect of our education, our workplace, and our lives.
Then they need to change all the places named after Robert Byrd in West Virginia!
That's correct and it is difficult for us to set aside the mindset of 21st Century America in order to understand the mindset of ante-bellum America.
Twenty years from now, the European Union could have a civil war over the issue of whether Britain, Poland and Spain have a right to seceed from the European Union.
What is the "correct" answer to that issue?
Can Britain, Spain and Poland freely withdraw from a Union they freely entered?
Does signing a European Constitution that never addresses the issue of secession destroy forever the concept of Britain, Spain and Poland as sovereign states?
Should the Polish General in command of the European Union Army stay in Germany to lead the E.U. Army into "rebel" Poland or should he resign his European Union commission and return to "independent" Poland to lead the Polish Army in defense of the land of his birth?
In America of 1860, the "correct" answers to the questions of the day were as uncertain as the "correct" answers to the hypothetical questions above.
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