Renaming Schools in 21st Century America

No offense to the worthy gentlemen, but the issue at hand is what to rename Woodrow Wilson High School, the comprehensive high school in Northwest Washington that has long carried the name of a two-term president. Wilson moved into the White House more than a century ago, and as a product of his time, he was also an unrelenting segregationist. Now in 2022, the D.C. Council is moving to change the name. School districts around the country, especially in the South, have been undergoing painful processes for years regarding renaming schools, especially dropping school names that honored Confederate leaders and other racists.

The council’s choice? Jackson-Reed, after Edna B. Jackson, the first Black teacher at the school, and Vincent E. Reed, the first Black principal at the school, who later became a superintendent of the D.C. school system. Jackson and Reed were two of seven finalists in the renaming schools sweepstakes. Some of the others were:

• August Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright
• Marion Barry, the former D.C. mayor
• Hilda Mason, an educator who also served on the D.C. Council and was chair of the education committee
• William Syphax, the first president of the Board of Trustees of Colored Schools of Washington and Georgetown and a founder of the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church
• Northwest, the part of the city where the school is located

Jackson-Reed wasn’t one of the seven, but was pushed at a hearing by D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who added up the percentages that Jackson and Reed received in a survey of some 6,000 residents and declared that the combined totals showed “overwhelming support” for the combination name. In that survey, it was August Wilson who got the most support — 29 percent. Combined Jackson and Reed got 36 percent (Reed got 19 percent and Jackson 17 percent). D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration pushed for the school to be renamed after August Wilson (which would have allowed the school to keep all of its signage that did not include “Woodrow”). That’s all the adults speaking. None of them let Wilson students decide.

On Dec. 2, 2020, the staff of the school’s student newspaper, the Beacon, endorsed renaming schools after Jackson — and the reasons are compelling. While saying that Reed had “a profoundly personal impact on the community,” it noted that there is no D.C. high school now named after a woman. There has never been a D.C. high school named after a woman. The editorial said that Jackson became the school’s first Black teacher at the then virtually all-White Wilson, a year after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision stating that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional.

Jackson — born and raised in D.C., where she was valedictorian at Dunbar High School in Northwest and graduated summa cum laude from Howard University in three years — stayed at Wilson as a social studies teacher for more than 20 years, building close relationships with students while pushing for integration and Black studies courses. She also published a weekly column in a prominent Black newspaper, the Oklahoma Eagle, in the 1930s, and wrote book reviews for the Journal of Negro History for more than a decade.

The students at the Beacon wrote the following:

“As a Black woman, Jackson’s intersectional identity is the antithesis of President Wilson’s. Her legacy is uniquely intertwined with our school’s past endeavors for equality. Honoring Jackson is key to distancing ourselves from the racism of President Wilson and doing our community justice. Jackson would be the first woman, and furthermore, the first Black woman, to have a DCPS high school named after her. In a district and school with so many Black girls, to choose another white or male namesake would be doing a disservice to a portion of our population that is too often underrepresented. As the first of many DCPS schools to be renamed, Wilson must set a clear precedent on how to address the lack of diversity in our titles. Choosing a Black woman is the best way to do that.

Beyond her identity, Jackson’s impact on our community cannot be quantified –– her influence as a Black pioneer in a majority-white population, as a teacher to countless students, and as a role model to teens, parents, and colleagues, demands recognition. While teachers are some of the most essential members of a school and society, they are rarely honored with so much as a plaque. Naming our school after Jackson is more than a meaningful gesture; it’s a message to the underappreciated, yet immensely valuable, local heroes in this community –– that teachers matter just as much, if not more, than any president or famous figure. Jackson’s advocacy for integration, Advanced Placement, and Black studies courses had a direct impact on Wilson. Her association with our school represents a sense of community that cannot be achieved by naming it after a one-dimensional dignitary or exclusive location.”

There will be more renaming schools in the district, offering opportunities for worthy men and women to be honored. The student journalists at Wilson spoke. Why not listen?

Allison Green
Boston Tutoring Services