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Posts tagged as “high school name change”

Florida School Named After KKK Grand Wizard Gets A New Name

By goodblacknews on December 20, 2013

Florida school name change: Members of the audience applaud after a Florida school board votes to change the name of a school named for a confederate general: Members of the audience applaud after the Duval County School Board, in Jacksonville, Fla., voted unanimously on Dec. 16, 2013, to change the name of Nathan B. Forrest High School, named for a Confederate general and honorary Ku Klux Klan leader.
Members of the audience applaud after the Duval County School Board, in Jacksonville, Fla., voted unanimously on Dec. 16, 2013, to change the name of Nathan B. Forrest High School, named for a Confederate general and honorary Ku Klux Klan leader. (AP Photo: The Florida Times-Union, Bob Self)

A major coup has been won by the students at the controversial Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla. After 54 years of ignoring the wishes of protestors who argued that the school should not be named after an American Civil War Confederate lieutenant-general and later served as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, the educational facility will now finally be receiving a new moniker, reportsWPTV.
The Duval County School Board voted on Monday, 7-0 that the high school, which has a predominantly Black student body, will choose between the names of “Westside” and “Firestone” in January.  When the high school opened its doors back in 1959 during the middle of the Civil Rights era, district school officials at the time chose to name it after Nathan B. Forrest (pictured), who had also been a slave trader. Under the Confederate lieutenant general’s orders, his troops massacred Black union soldiers at a Tennessee fort. Forrest then went on to serve as the first Grand Wizard of the KKK in 1867.
Under his leadership, he and his dragoons launched a campaign of midnight attacks, which included whipping and killing Black voters and White Republicans to scare them from voting and running for office.
The high school name change was actually spearheaded this go-round by Ty Richmond, a parent who set up a Change.org petition that garnered 162,150 signatures. Many attempts had been made previously to get board members to change the high school’s name but to no avail.