Elementary School Named After Confederate General Changes Name to Honor Barack Obama – By Makayla Rose (ijr.com) / June 19 2018
J.E.B Stuart Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia will be renamed to honor former President Barack Obama after a 6-1 vote by the School Board on Monday, reports CBS 6.
This vote follows an 8-1 decision by the Richmond School Board to rename the elementary school that previously honored the Confederate general, earlier in 2018.
The board collected ideas from community members, staff, and students for the new name. Several of the names suggested were of civil rights activists.
There were seven finalists: Northside Elementary, Wishtree, Oliver Hill, Barbara Jones, Albert Norrel, Henry Marsh, and Barack Obama.
CNN reports that the students of the school, 95 percent of which are African American, voted on the new names and came up with three finalists.
The top three names were: Northside Elementary, Wishtree, and Barack Obama.
Stuart Elementary is the only school in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, to be named after a Confederate general.
CBS 6 claims that while this isn’t the first school to be named after the 44th President, it seems to be the first school to renamed from a Confederate General.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, two schools were the subjects of name-change votes on Monday. The Board voted to rename Columbus and Chouteau elementary schools.
However, the Board postponed a vote on the renaming of an elementary school named after Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Columbus Elementary, named after the famous explorer now considered by some to be problematic, will be named after Dolores Huerta, the co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association.
Chouteau Elementary, named after the slave importer and owner, will be become Wayman Tisdale Fine Arts Academy. This renaming pays tribute to a local NBA and Jazz legend who passed in 2009.
https://ijr.com/ijr-blue/2018/06/1104212-school-barack-obama-lee/
