A question for people in the South.

[pnwmom]

42. I'm guessing you searched for Presidents' names -- the ones who owned slaves

when it was still legal. That isn't comparable to naming them after Confederate generals or leaders of the KKK.

I remember when my elementary school was renamed, to great fanfare, when I was in second grade. The name was changed from some builder to "Albert Einstein."

My children's elementary school was named after a local historical figure, and there was no shrine to him. But the school handbook did have a page talking about who he was. If he'd been a member of the KKK, I'd have been fighting to get the name changed. The names on schools send a message. They matter.


http://web.utk.edu/~dalderma/mlkstreet/mlkschools_urbangeog.pdf

SCHOOL NAMES AS CULTURAL ARENAS: THE NAMING OF U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.1

Derek H. Alderman2 Department of Geography East Carolina University
Schools play an important role in shaping the collective memory and historical identity of their students and the attendant community. While accomplished directly through school curriculum development and the teaching of history per se, student conceptions of the past are also shaped indirectly through the commemorative activities and symbols woven into the everyday fabric of the school (e.g., school holidays, programs, bulletin boards). The naming of schools after historical figures is a subtle yet powerful way of communicating “the accomplishments of previous generations” and defining a set of folk heroes (Goldstein, 1978, p. 119). By merging history and the physical environment, place names and other spatial commemorations work to reify certain visions of the past, giving them legitimacy and identification with the natural order of things (Azarayahu, 1996).