Honor All Thy Forefathers?

Following a policy that prohibits schools from being named in honor of “former slave owners or others who did not respect equal opportunity for all,” the New Orleans school board recently renamed what had been the George Washington Elementary School. Opponents of changing the school’s name--and there weren’t many in this school district where 91% of the students are African Americans--argue that the decision does not account for all of the first president’s achievements or reflect the mores of the time. Should schools be named after slave owners like Washington or Thomas Jefferson? Should Abraham Lincoln, despite the Emancipation Proclamation, be similarly dishonored because some accuse him of having been tolerant of slavery? Local students from George Washington Preparatory and Thomas Jefferson high schools talked to MARY REESE BOYKIN about attending schools named after U.S. presidents who owned slaves.

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BENJAMIN LAFFITTE

17, senior, George Washington Preparatory High School

I learned in eighth-grade history that George Washington owned slaves. My school was named after George Washington because he was the first president of the United States. In the early 1970s, Washington Prep was predominantly white. I don’t think that the school name should be changed.

I don’t associate the school with the president. I associate it with the great athletes it has produced: Brandon Martin, who plays professional basketball in Australia, and Darin Harris, a football player at Arizona State.

When I think of Washington Prep, I think of my family--my sisters and brothers who attended here. I think of the great friends I have met; I never think of President George Washington.

In my four years here, I have developed school pride. We are taught to carry ourselves a certain way; special awards are given to those who wear our blue, red and white school uniforms. We are encouraged to come to school every day, cooperate with our teachers and make good grades. But in none of this have I ever heard anyone say, “We are proud to be here because our school is named after the first president of the United States.”

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NICOLAS RODRIGUEZ

17, senior, Thomas Jefferson High School

This school has existed since 1916. We are proud of its name.

We are aware of slavery, how the slaves were mistreated, how the females were violated. But at this point, everybody has equal opportunity and equal rights. We are a free country.

I think that we should look at Thomas Jefferson’s successes. He was one of our forefathers. He signed the Declaration of Independence, which made America an independent country, even though citizenship for all Americans didn’t come until the passing of the 14th Amendment.

I can see how people whose ancestors were slaves may be insulted by Thomas Jefferson’s past as a slave owner.

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TESSIE FIELDS

14, freshman, George Washington Preparatory High School

The name of my school doesn’t matter. What matters is that we learn a lot here and we are going to do better than when blacks were slaves.

Slavery was cruel. The slave masters should not have beat my people; they should have left us alone.

When I studied about George Washington in school, I was never told that he was a slave owner. But I don’t associate my school with him. I associate it with a place to learn, the girls’ basketball program, the school in my community.

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DEMETRIUS BONIERE

17, senior, George Washington Preparatory High School

Names don’t hurt people; they are just names. At Washington, we are taught to work hard for our goals. We all know that George Washington was a hard worker, so we have that in common.

George Washington was a human being just like me and he made mistakes. That’s the way people lived back then. My pastor recently told me that George Washington had black children. I had never heard this in school. In some ways, he may not have been an honorable man; but on the other hand, he was a human being, capable of making mistakes.

While I don’t view slavery lightly and I do see it for the evil that it was, I feel that it made us black people realize that we can’t let anyone hold us down, that we must survive, take care of our families and be strong. But slavery is done and we just need to live. To come back now and say George Washington was a slave owner so black students should not attend a school named after him is, in my opinion, the wrong thing to do.