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School Board In Virginia Votes To Rename Schools Honoring Thomas Jefferson, George Mason

This article is more than 3 years old.
Updated Dec 9, 2020, 03:39pm EST

Topline

The Falls Church City Public Schools board in Virginia voted unanimously on Tuesday to rename Thomas Jefferson Elementary School and George Mason High School, following an evaluation process that lasted six months and included a community survey and public hearings.

Key Facts

In October, the school board surveyed 3,488 community members, staff, parents and students.

According to the school board, more than half of the respondents (56%) said "no" when asked if the names for both schools should be changed.

School Board Chair Greg Anderson said the board “took seriously the viewpoints and concerns raised” by students, parents, staff and community members and that the district's schools must be places where all these disparate groups “feel safe, supported and inspired.”

According to the survey, participants who said the schools should be renamed did so because Jefferson and Mason owned slaves and that the schools “should be named after individuals who better reflect the values of the Falls Church community.”

The renaming process will follow the guidelines outlined in the FCCPS Regulation FFA-R School Building Names Committee, and the committees will ultimately recommend five names to the School Board.

Key Background:

In the wake of nationwide protests following the brutal killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, amid a national reckoning on the impact of systemic racism in the U.S., numerous monuments associated with antebellum America were taken down. Jefferson was one of the country's Founding Fathers and served as the third president of the U.S. from 1801 to 1809. He also owned more than 600 slaves. Historians have publicly asserted (with the first claim being made in 1802) that Jefferson raped one of his slaves, a Black woman named Sally Hemings, who was some 28 years younger than her master. Hemings reportedly bore six of Jefferson’s children. The accusation was indirectly denied by Jefferson. However, in 1998, DNA samples were gathered from living descendants of Jefferson and Hemings, and, according to an article in the scientific journal Nature, tests revealed that Jefferson was almost certainly the father of some of Hemings’ children. In the 1780s, Jefferson wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, the only full-length book published by him in his lifetime. In Notes, Jefferson writes extensively about slavery. Although he publicly professed to be opposed to the evil institution (calling it a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot”), Jefferson profited financially from slavery all his life. He justified it by expounding on his belief that blacks were inferior and “as incapable as children.” Jefferson equated maintaining slavery in the U.S. with trapping a wild animal, writing that it was like holding “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.”

Critical Quote: 

“The circumstance of superior beauty is thought worthy of attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?” Jefferson writes in Notes on the State of Virginia. Explaining the difference between the two races, he writes, Blacks “have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor.”

Tangent:

Students, teachers and parents have submitted more than 60 recommendations for the new name, including John Lewis, Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela and both Michelle and Barack Obama.

Big Number:

$96,760. That’s the estimated cost to change the name of George Mason High School, according to the school board. It will cost about $13,500 to rename Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

Further Reading:

Forget What You Saw In 'Hamilton.' Jefferson's Accomplishments Made This Country A Better Place (Forbes) 

Falls Church Votes to Rename Thomas Jefferson, George Mason Schools (NBC)

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