Battles Rage On and On Over Lost Southern Heroes’ Namesakes.

Yahoo! News ^ | Sun, Jan 04, 2004 | By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press Writer

[Creamer]

Educators Debate Efforts to Rename Schools

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 (see article for links) 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 (see article) sees efforts by Harrison and others as a "chipping away, piece by piece, at our history."

[For educational purposes only. All rights reserved by the publisher.]

[Creamer]

I guess the southern die-hards don’t want to see their public schools renamed.

This is one war of frazzled nerves that never seems to end.

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[TomServo]

Ping....

And please the regulars, too...

[tcuoohjohn]

I have the unigue or dubious distinction of having attended Jefferson Davis Junior High School AND Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Florida. The School team was the rebels and the Confederate Flag was the Banner.

At the time I had little consciousness of the racial implications of the school names even in the throws of desegregation in 1966. Looking back on it I marvel at the courage and forbearance of the black students who first integrated our school. It would be like asking Jews to attend Eichmann Junior High and Adolf Hitler High School.

[dts32041]

"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 (see article for links) ruled segregated schools unconstitutional in 1954 but before the departure of whites left many inner city schools majority black."

Have you ever seen the white population in schools named after MLK Jr, or who lives on his streets with his name.

I have and it is segregation enforce in the Liberal north.

The demo rats are still enforcing the segregation laws and the anti black gun laws.

Scratch a demo rat and you have a slave master.

[Creamer]

I take it from your reply that you favor the massive, wholesale number of public school name changes away from the proud heritage of southerners.

After all, remember, southerners are bona fide Americans, too, aren't they?

The elimination of anybody's heritage should not be done without publicly discussing and thoroughly understanding the immense psychic and reputational damage it does to the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of these southern leaders, who still bear their last names.

These current day families and their off-springs are part of our shared national heritage, because their forefathers and foremothers by their acknowledged leadership roles during a time of gut-wrenching civil war, are interwoven into the very fabric of our nation's history .

I have always felt that there were at least two sides to every hot, broiling, extended, public controversy.

Thanks for sharing your opinion, it is very interesting.

[yooper]

I've done battle with my fellow southern Freepers over the years on the truth about the war, I've defended Lincoln in such instances because he was villified by said fellow Freepers, and I've defended statements I made with regard to southern motives.

That said, Julian Bond is an ignorant buffoon if he claims that Robert E. Lee harbored one single racist bone in his body. The guy didn't do his homework, or he wouldn't have made the comments he did.

[okie01]

It would be like asking Jews to attend Eichmann Junior High and Adolf Hitler High School.

In the interest of accuracy, better parallels would be Kaiser Wilhelm Junior High and Otto von Bismarck High School.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

""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." "

Uh, say there Jule ole boy, would you then explain all those Robert Byrd schools and monuments all over the state of West Virginia giving honor to an old KKK leader who swore to oppose Black intergration into the military with his last dying breath?

Oh, he repented and saw the light.

Well ole son, these Confederate leader types are all dead. but I am sure if they were given the chance to be alive, they too would have repented and seen the light also.

Just wondering.

[claudiustg]

Robert E. Lee is as fine a gentleman to name a high school after as one could hope to find. These demagogues must not be allowed to further their racist agenda. Rational Southerners must stand up to these scoundrels!
I was an Army recruiter in the Greater Boston area. I don't think there's a place in the country more racially divided. These liberals have a nerve to lecture their countrymen on racism when their own carefully tended backyards are in such a mess.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Your rantings are *&Y&% %$#* ^%@%**, because you really, really, don't want to know what I really think

[swilhelm73]

Robert E. Lee was not a proponent of slavery, and had freed his own slaves.

He fought for his state and his home, as did the majority of the Confederacy.

He and Jackson were two of the most brilliant of American military leaders and as such have as much of a right to have a school named after them as say Pershing. Further, it was Lee's decision to call for an end to the fighting that stopped the otherwise likely prospect of continued guerilla resistance.

Davis, IIRC, was instrumental in the exploration of the Northwest and it becoming part of the US.

Forrest though is a different story. He was a good general too, but was a hardcore bigot who founded Robert Byrd's beloved Ku Klux Klan and, again IIRC, was guilty of slaughtering blacks in the South right at the end of the war.

[10mm]

I marvel at the courage and forbearance of the black students who first integrated our school. It would be like asking Jews to attend Eichmann Junior High and Adolf Hitler High School.

I must have been asleep in American History when we covered the death camps built by Jefferson Davis in order to exterminate the black race.

[XRdsRev]

One thing people like Julian Bond and others forget (or neglect to mention) is that most state flag issues and school namings were done not because of desegregation but because of the Civil War Centennial 1960-1965.

For those that don't remember, the Civil War Centennial was a 5 year long period of activities, reenactments, dedications, intense scholarly research, etc. during which time, interest in the American Civil War was heightened in both the North and South. Many public buildings during this time (North and South) were named or renamed for Civil War personalities and hundreds of regimental and battle monuments/markers were erected or rededicated. The US Postal Service even issued stamps to commemorate certain Centennial events.

The Civil War Centennial, like the Revolutionary War Centennial in 1876 and the Bicentennial in 1975-1981, was quite a big deal. It was the Centennial that spurred the renewed National interest in the Civil War that still exists to this day.

[rustbucket]

Forrest has certainly been portrayed as a bigot and evil person. The real story is more complicated.

He didn't found the KKK, which was formed by six people in 1865. Forrest became its leader in April 1867 when it really got organized and disbanded it in 1869 when it got violent.

Forrest made a fortune as a slave trader before the war. But by the accounts I've read, he treated his slaves well.

From the Sept. 7, 1864 Daily Picayune of New Orleans:

General Forrest and the Negroes. It is known that the negroes of the Methodist congregation at Uniontown, Ala., recently contributed $1000 to the Association for the Relief of Maimed Soldiers, and being informed that this contribution was sufficient to constitute a life director, they selected General Forrest for that honor. The Selma Reporter publishes the General's letter to Dr. Neely acknowledging the compliment, in which he says:

I am not indifferent to the compliment paid me by the "Methodist Congregation of Negroes at Uniontown." I prize this manifestation on the part of the negro more than the thousand calumnies with which a defeated and vanished foe are endeavoring to blacken my name. It has been my fortune to have much dealing with the negro since I arrived at manhood, and I have uniformly treated them with kindness and humanity. Those that have been forcibly taken from me I know are sighing for the happy home from which they have been seduced. Those who headed not the ridiculous proposals of the Federals, and who still remain with me, fly from his approaching footsteps with the same instincts of fear and danger that they would fly from a leprosy. I predict that, after peace shall have been restored, most of the negroes who have been decoyed from their homes, will gladly and joyfully return, infinitely preferring slavery among the Southern people to freedom at the North. Instead of being guilty of the atrocities charged upon me, I have uniformly expressed my sympathies for the negro. He has been deluded by false promises, and I had much rather make war upon the white man who has deceived him.

I think he was a bit deluded in his reply, but there are a number of accounts by former slaves recorded in the 1930s that echo his view that they preferred slavery times to the freedom that happened afterwards.

Perhaps this donation by Negroes was something instigated by the Confederates to blunt charges against Forrest by the North.

The charges against him stem from Fort Pillow, where a number of black Federal soldiers were supposedly killed after surrendering. It is not clear how many were killed in the battle and how many were killed afterward. There are reports of blacks surrendering at Fort Pillow, then grabbing their weapons and fighting again. If that happened, it is no wonder they got killed. On the other hand, if Confederates were going around and shooting blacks after they surrendered, it is not surprising the blacks started fighting again.

Forrest twice asked the Federals to surrender before the Fort Pillow fight, pointing out the superiority of his forces. The Feds didn't surrender and got overrun. It is quite possible that Forrest's Tennessee Confederate soldiers took out some of their anger on these black troops who reportedly had been mistreating the Confederate soldiers' families in the area.

Apparently Forrest tried to control or reign in his soldiers at Fort Pillow. In its account of the battle, a Memphis paper (Memphis was then in Federal hands) reported the words of a Union captain captured at Fort Pillow: "Capt. Young, Provost Marshall, was taken prisoner, slightly wounded, and paroled the liberty of their camps, and allowed to see his wife. He says that our troops [the Federals] behaved gallantly throughout the whole action, that our loss [Federals again] in killed will exceed 200; he also stated that Gen. Forrest shot one of his own men for refusing quarters to our men."

[Little Ray]

These folks are right. The names of Lee, Davis, Jackson, Stuart, et al, should NOT be sullied by placin' 'em on the facades of gub'mint schools that represent just 'bout everything these valiant men fought against.
And I AIN'T talkin' 'bout segregation or slavery...

[tcuoohjohn]

Something of a non-sequitur isn't it? The issue isn't death camps ( though Andersonville was indeed a death camp when you look at the numbers. Wirz was hanged for it.) The issue is, as always, the history of freedom. Nathan Bedford Forrest founded the Klan in 1866, an organization that was very active in 1966 in Northern Florida. The intent of the south was not to exterminate blacks ( it would be horribly expensive in that the capital value of slaves was 2.4 billion dollars or about 28% of Southern capital. It was concentrated among southern elites.) The intent was to continue their status as property. Jefferson Davis was a bumptious fool who was long on rhetoric and short on strategic thinking.

( I am a southerner by birth, heritage, and choice. 1618 Virginia. I am not however a bumptious romantic about the southern ' lost cause'. It was a foolish, misbegotten exercise that only romantic fools would have begun.)

[tcuoohjohn]

Then you would be wrong again. While we cannot undo history nor can we change the nature of the leadership we are stuck with it. I am a southerner born and reared. While I revere my southern heritage and find many laudable things about the south, the Civil War and Slavery are not among them. It has a cloying Margaret Mitchell feel about it that is waaay too sweet.

[wardaddy]

Racism is not the evil to end all evils.

And if it is as some socially liberal FReepers feel then we should basically toss out all world history prior to 1980 or so....and continue to glean as we go.

The black principal who says it;s the substance of the school that counts should get a medal.

Julian Bond is just angry because he is mostly a genetic peckerwood and has never been accepted as such. I do hereby apologize for that..lol

[wardaddy]

You're way too soft....how old are you? are you a woman?