I know times have change and we have a black president serving his second term in office and the blaten racism isn’t the same as it was in the 50’s and 60’s hell during the entire civil rights movement. But there are still the subtle reminders that stay established in our society that should be changed.
The NYDailyNews reports:
It seems a difficult task to get a Florida school board to change the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, the namesake of a Confederate general and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. A petition on Change.org boasting 75,000 signatures calls on Duval County School District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti to rename the school, at which more than half of the students are African-American.“I’m shocked and outraged that in this day and age, any student would be forced to attend a school named for Nathan Bedford Forrest. I urge you to immediately change the school’s name,” Jacksonville resident Omotayo Richmond wrote in the petition. But the school board does not respond to petitions, spokeswoman Marsha Oliver told the Daily News Friday.“We have a school boarThe council is made up of students, parents, businesses and members of the community, she said. The large number of area signatures on the petition makes no difference to the board’s process, she said. Asked if the council will bring up changing the school’s name, Oliver replied, “I can’t answer that.”The school board was asked by the School Advisory Council in April 2007 to change the name, but the panel voted it down 5-2 in 2008. The high school bearing Forrest’s named opened in 1959 and had only white students. policy and processes that we follow,” Oliver said. “The petition is not the starting point for that process.”Rather, the board’s advisory council must inititate a name change, she said.
