School board considers name change for Robert E. Lee High

Posted on July 6, 2020 By Editor Neighborhood News, Riverside, Avondale, Ortega, Murray Hill

Riverside’s Robert E. Lee High School may soon boast a different moniker.

Duval County School Board Members voted unanimously June 16 to move toward considering changing the names of six schools that now honor Confederate soldiers: Joseph Finegan Elementary School, Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, Jefferson Davis Middle School, Kirby-Smith Middle School, J.E.B. Stuart Middle School, and Robert E. Lee High School.

Although members of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville and others recently urged the school district to consider renaming the six schools, this is by no means a new conversation. In November of 2014, after nearly a year of deliberation, the school board changed the name of Nathan B. Forrest High School to Westside High School in light of the Confederate General’s co-founding of the Ku Klux Klan.

Since 2014, activist groups have advocated for changing the names of the other six schools in Duval County named after Confederate soldiers. Fueled by current racial unrest in the nation and Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry’s recent push to eliminate all memorials honoring the Confederacy, the conversation has become heated.

School Board Chairman Warren Jones, who previously served on the city’s Civil Rights Task Force that worked to create an index of monuments tied to the confederacy wrote a letter to the board advocating for the name-change process to begin. “This effort can help to heal a city that is fractured,” he wrote.

There is a five-step procedure wherein once the process is voted on and initiated. Superintendent Diana Greene will engage with members of the school community, student population, PTA, and others, gathering community feedback before submitting a recommendation for or against a name-change, on which the School Board then votes.

The late Stetson Kennedy, a 1932 graduate of Robert E. Lee High School, stands outside his alma mater. There is a grassroots effort within the Riverside community to name the school after Kennedy, who was a champion for civil rights, author of seven books including “The Klan Unmasked”and “The Jim Crow Guide.” Kennedy infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and exposed their illegal activities to the House Un-American Activities Committee. He died in 2011 at the age of 94. The Stetson Kennedy Foundation carries on his legacy of standing for human rights, stewardship of the environment, and preserving folk culture. A documentary entitled “Klandestine Man,” about his life is currently in production.

“I think this will be a lengthy process,” said Board Member Lori Hershey. “If this were an easy decision, it would have already happened.” Hershey encouraged anyone in the city who wants to have a voice in the discussion to attend and participate in the community meetings that will be scheduled by Greene. “Although none of the six schools are in my district, I know there are people in Mandarin and throughout Duval County who have an interest in each of the schools and they should voice their opinions,” Hershey said, noting her husband, Scott, graduated from Robert E. Lee High School, as did his siblings, his mother, and his grandmother. “There are many who, like Scott, are torn by a family history at that school, yet understand the protests for change.”

Having anticipated this change even before she became a member of the school board, Hershey said she has compiled a notebook of how other cities have dealt with the challenge. In August of 2017, when protestors wanted to knock down the statute of Robert E. Lee, an article by Time Staff Writer Olivia B. Waxman, titled “Here’s Why Robert E. Lee Opposed Putting Up Confederate Monuments,” gave a compelling argument in favor of the protestors, quoting none other than Robert E. Lee, who said, in response to those wanting to memorialize him in marble: “As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated; my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment; & of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour.”

As to petitions to be signed and submitted suggesting specific school names to replace those which already exist, Board Policy 8.59 Naming or Renaming Schools, Section IV, states: “A. The name of the school shall not be of a person (whether living or deceased).” In response to a question regarding this section, which must have been added in the recent past, Hershey noted that there may be room for flexibility in this regard. “Changing the name to somebody who best represents the community would be an interesting prospect,” she said. “I’m open to hear the input of stakeholders with a balanced open mind. We need to create a win-win situation and do our best to move this community forward.”

Susan D. Brandenburg
Resident Community News