School Puts Jefferson’s Legacy to Test

In the end, schoolteacher Marguerite Talley-Hughes simply got tired of repeating a blatant historical lie: Thomas Jefferson, she insists, was not the all-encompassing hero that the textbooks claim.

She points out that the nation’s third president and namesake of the Bay Area elementary school where Talley-Hughes teaches was a slave owner who rejected arguments by abolitionists of his day that all people were created equal. Is this the kind of figure, she asks, to hold up to schoolchildren as a modern-day moral icon?

Talley-Hughes doesn’t think so. So the African American kindergarten teacher has led a campaign to erase Jefferson’s name from the school’s facade in favor of a more-deserving historical figure.

Her two-year effort brought results last week when Jefferson School principal Betty Delaney released a list of eight alternatives -- including 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truth, farmworker organizer Cesar Chavez and Ralph Bunche, a United Nations diplomat and the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

In April, the school will pick a possible alternative from the list and take a second vote on whether to replace Jefferson with the new name. Voting will be parents, teachers and the school’s 300 pupils, who range from kindergarteners to fifth-graders. Those too young to read will be given a pictorial ballot.

Berkeley Unified School District officials would still have to approve any name change.

Talley-Hughes insists that she has not launched a public attack on Jefferson. She doesn’t want his image removed from the nickel. She doesn’t want to tear down the Jefferson Memorial. But she does want one small school to decide for itself who should serve as its historical namesake.

“It’s a tricky proposition to teach African American children that someone is a hero who held their ancestors in slavery,” she said of the school, where about a quarter of the students are black. “One week you’re telling students about Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, who fought slavery, and the next you’re talking about Jefferson, who kept slaves. How do you explain the contradiction?”

Questions over Jefferson’s legacy have opened an emotional debate in this ultraliberal community: When, if ever, should a society reevaluate its civic symbols? And should historical figures be judged by today’s more politically correct standards?

Historians say it would be all too easy to knock many famous figures off their pedestals.

“We’re not just judging people like Jefferson on our terms, but on history’s terms. At the time Jefferson was president, there were many who believed that slavery was wrong. It was not as if people were united on this issue,” said Leon Litwack, a UC Berkeley historian who specializes in African American affairs.

“In the end, the name of this school matters less than the degree we demystify our historical icons. Because that’s what education is all about.”

Still, some think the school is wasting time on semantics when it should be more concerned about students. For Richard Gentry, the controversy is an opportunity to talk about history with his two children, who both attend Jefferson.

“Great leaders, many of them, have great flaws,” said the corporate lawyer turned stay-at-home dad. “Martin Luther King was a minister and civil rights leader who carried on extramarital affairs. It’s not like slavery, but it shows hypocrisy. Jefferson was a slave owner. But he also wrote the Declaration of Independence, the document Abraham Lincoln relied upon when he shifted the focus of the Civil War from keeping the Union intact to the emancipation of slaves.”

Nationwide, hundreds of schools are named after American presidents and founding fathers who owned slaves -- including Jefferson, George Washington, Patrick Henry and George Mason. But some have begun to rethink their names. In 1992, predominantly black New Orleans began renaming more than two dozen public schools that had honored U.S. presidents, Confederate generals and Southern governors who owned slaves.

A school named for Gen. Robert E. Lee now honors Ronald McNair, the African American astronaut who died in the 1986 Challenger shuttle explosion. Gen. Pierre Beauregard surrendered his honors to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

And schools named after 19th-century New Orleans socialite and slave owner John McDonogh now bear the names of people such as gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and jazz great Louie Armstrong.

But the public building name game has moved beyond presidents and slavery.

In El Segundo, the City Council this month defeated plans to name two library reading rooms after authors Agatha Christie and Jack London because Christie was British and London had been a communist.

And a former San Francisco supervisor a few years ago led an unsuccessful campaign to change a street named for former U.S. Sen. James D. Phelan, a racist who once ran a campaign on the slogan “Keep California White,” in favor of a deceased Filipina activist.

Berkeley has also had a few public changes of heart. Civil rights leader King in 1968 was honored with a school once named for President James A. Garfield. Abraham Lincoln Elementary School was later renamed for black nationalist Malcolm X. And a school named for Christopher Columbus was renamed after civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

“Columbus was an easy target in Berkeley,” said Mark Coplan, a spokesman for the Berkeley Unified School District. “In this town we don’t even celebrate Columbus Day. Around here it’s Indigenous People’s Day.”

At Malcolm X Arts and Academic Magnet School, Principal Cheryl Chinn tries to instill the positive side of the controversial black nationalist who once advocated violence against whites. “Most students don’t even know who Malcolm X is,” she said. “I’d love my school no matter what they call it.”

Many say Jefferson deserves his namesake no matter what.

In an e-mail to the district, Berkeley High School junior and Jefferson alumnus Daniel Gleick pointed out that the Virginian believed that every American deserved at least an elementary school education. “It could be argued that elementary schools such as Jefferson Elementary exist because of him,” he wrote.

“All of his accomplishments and undertakings should not be so lightly cast aside simply because times and values have changed.”

Delaney said the school would turn the issue into a learning experience. Fifth-graders will make presentations on each name proposal. Students who can’t read will have printed information to take home so their parents can help them vote.

“We have an opportunity to teach kids how to deal with a controversy,” she said.

Gentry’s kids have already made up their minds. His 11-year-old son preferred one choice -- for the mere sound of the name: Sequoia. Questioned by his father, he said, “Hey Dad, I can do whatever I want. It’s my vote.”

But not all of Jefferson’s students seem to grasp the issue at hand. Two second-graders visiting the principal’s office last week talked about their upcoming decision.

“I want to name the school after John Kerry. He’s such a better man than George Bush,” said 7-year-old Nicole.

When told that Kerry’s name was not on the list, she shrugged. Nicole didn’t know much about Jefferson, only that he was a president who owned slaves.

“Does John Kerry own slaves?” asked a classmate, Victor, 7.

“No,” Nicole announced matter-of-factly. “He’s too young.”