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To: Milton Miteybad

RE: Are we absolutely certain that this Robert E. Lee Elementary School was in fact named for the Confederate general?

Possible but highly unlikely.

According to this site:

http://www.kusi.com/story/29391496/san-diego-unified-school-district-contemplates-name-change-for-robert-e-lee-elementary

Lee Elementary first opened on January 12, 1959. Historical school data shows it was always Robert E. Lee Elementary and that the reason for the name selected was “American soldier and educator.”

Unless we can find another famous Robert E. Lee who is a famous solider and educator, it has to be named after THE Robert E. Lee.


41 posted on 06/24/2015 10:43:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
I also thought it unlikely. However, the San Diego school board could find some otherwise anonymous schmoe named "Robert E. Lee" and offer the pretense that the school is named for him, not the "evil" American soldier and educator.

This would be a mere variation on a theme of historical revisionism borrowed from King County, Washington. King County, of course, had been named for William Rufus King, an Alabaman who had been serving as Vice-President of the U.S. when the Washington Territory was created in 1852. In 1986, the King County Council approved a resolution revising the historical basis for the county name; no longer would the county be named for William Rufus King (for whom the county was, in truth and in fact, actually named.) Instead, King County was to have been deemed to be so named in honor of Martin Luther King, who, in truth and in fact, did not even exist at the time the county was organized, and who therefore could not possibly have been its actual namesake. This change was approved by the Washington Legislature and signed by the Governor in 2005.

So as long as the anonymous schlub named "Robert E. Lee" that they manage to find isn't in prison or on a sexual predator list, the school board would be in like the proverbial Flynn in declaring that the school is named for this anonymous schlub over here named Robert E. Lee, not that other guy. The precedent is there, after all.
56 posted on 06/24/2015 11:13:56 AM PDT by Milton Miteybad (I am Jim Thompson. {Really.})
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