{"id":20961,"date":"2013-12-18T07:26:48","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T12:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=20961"},"modified":"2014-01-02T14:25:07","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T19:25:07","slug":"whats-in-a-high-school-name-history-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/12\/18\/whats-in-a-high-school-name-history-and-power\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s In A High School Name? History And Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Brothers<\/a>

Sammy Mack \/ StateImpact Florida<\/p>

Brothers Rodney Jones and Tremain McCreary attend the school that will no longer be named Nathan B. Forrest High School<\/p><\/div>\n

When Rodney Jones and\u00a0Tremain\u00a0McCreary\u00a0walked to school on Tuesday morning, the brothers were headed to the same classrooms, to sit next to the same students, in a building with the same\u00a0fa\u00e7ade\u00a0it had on Monday.<\/p>\n

But it was not the same school they had gone to the day before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a relief to me to know the school name had changed\u2014I was thinking about it: how do we have a\u00a0KKK\u00a0leader\u2019s name for our school?\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are changing around this school,\u201d says\u00a0McCreary.<\/p>\n

On Monday night, the Duval County Public School Board voted unanimously to rename Nathan B. Forrest High School.<\/p>\n

Forrest High was originally named for Nathan Bedford Forrest\u2014the Civil War general and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/12\/WhatsInAName_SD_web.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/p>\n

It almost didn\u2019t happen that way. In 1959, students at what was then a new high school in Jacksonville voted to become the Valhalla High Vikings. But like so many southern cities at the time, Jacksonville was wrestling with its identity against the backdrop of the civil rights movement.<\/p>\n

At the last minute, the Daughters of the Confederacy convinced the board to name the school after Forrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was clearly a reaction to the civil rights movement and desegregation,\u201d says Jacksonville\u2019s superintendent, Dr. Nikolai\u00a0Vitti. \u201cWhat I think is concerning about that is, one: it negated the voice of the students. But it also was a sign of the resistance to racial equality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like this are literally carved-in-stone sorts of decisions,\u201d says Peter Moran, a historian and professor who studies how schools get named in the South.<\/p>\n

\"Nathan<\/a>

Sammy Mack \/ StateImpact Florida<\/p>

Nathan B. Forrest High will get a new name<\/p><\/div>\n

He says schools of a certain era reflect the power structures of their time: \u201cYou can probe those a little bit and learn something about those people who made that decision and the values of that place at that point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese names are going to last a long time if you do your job right,\u201d says Bruce\u00a0Turkel, CEO and executive creative director of\u00a0Turkel\u00a0Brands in Miami. His firm has worked on branding for big civic projects like the new\u00a0Soundscape\u00a0Park on Miami Beach. \u201cThese things matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turkel\u00a0says that when it comes to naming an important cultural institution\u2014like a school\u2014there\u2019s a responsibility to the people who use it and the community around it.<\/p>\n

The school once known as Nathan B. Forrest High School, home of the Rebels, is now a majority African-American high school\u2014and critics of the name have made many attempts to change it over the years.<\/p>\n

For community and education activists like\u00a0Aleta\u00a0Alston-Toure, the Forrest name represented an institutional racism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a small thing, changing the name of a school,\u201d said\u00a0Alston-Toure, but she said the change represents an important first victory.<\/p>\n

As recently as 2008, the school board elected not to rename Forrest. The votes fell along color lines.<\/p>\n

In an interview with\u00a0StateImpact\u00a0Florida in June<\/a>, Jacksonville\u2019s superintendent Dr. Nikolai\u00a0Vitti\u00a0indicated he would be open to renaming Forrest if the community supported it. After that, more than 160,000 people signed a petition to change Forrest\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

The school district held a series of public hearings. Many of the speakers who came out in favor of keeping Forrest said the name was part of their personal history.<\/p>\n

\u201cForrest was a slave trader, that is true, but again, it\u2019s being looked at with 2013 eyes, not 1860 eyes\u2026 At that time, it was a legitimate business,\u201d said one speaker during public comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s part of my heritage, it\u2019s part of my status as a veteran, sharing my status with Nathan Bedford Forrest,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville residents in favor of the change brushed the criticism aside.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t\u00a0gonna\u00a0change anyone\u2019s history,\u201d said one man. \u201cPeople aren\u2019t going to come in the middle of the night and say, \u2018we want your yearbook so we can change it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When the school board members voted to change the name, most of them cited a survey showing that current students supported a name change.<\/p>\n

\"Nikolai<\/a>

Sammy Mack \/ StateImpact Florida<\/p>

Nikolai Vitti has been superintendent of Duval County Public Schools since November 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a different board than the one that voted in 2008. And, says\u00a0Vitti, the decision indicates it\u2019s a different Jacksonville, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it restores faith in part of the community that didn\u2019t always feel we were equitable with our decisions,\u201d says\u00a0Vitti.<\/p>\n

He hopes that students at Forrest will see this episode as evidence that their voice has power.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows me that someone cares about my education\u2014not just sending me to a school named after a confederate general,\u201d says\u00a0McCreary. \u201cMy thoughts matter. I feel a sense of accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCreary, his classmates, and Forrest alumni are being given the chance to vote on a replacement name.<\/p>\n

Whatever they choose\u2014it won\u2019t be a person\u2019s name.\u00a0 There\u2019s a rule against that in Jacksonville now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Rodney Jones and\u00a0Tremain\u00a0McCreary\u00a0walked to school on Tuesday morning, the brothers were headed to the same classrooms, to sit next to the same students, in a building with the same\u00a0fa\u00e7ade\u00a0it had on Monday. But it was not the same school they had gone to the day before. \u201cIt\u2019s a relief to me to know the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":20962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[872,847],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20961"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20971,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20961\/revisions\/20971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}