The name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general in the U.S. Civil War and the first ‘Grand Wizard’ of the Ku Klux Klan, is not simply committed to the history books. It is creating a rush of ongoing controversy.
An online petition at change.org with more than 78,000 signatures is asking the Duval Co. Public School District in Florida to change the name of Nathan B. Forrest High School, saying that the current title honors a deeply unworthy legacy.
“Naming a public high school for so divisive a figure is a relic of a bygone era,” the petition, submitted by Omotayo Richmond of Jacksonville, Fla., states. Jacksonville is in Duval Co.
The petition also highlights the majority black population of the school — and accordingly how the school’s name seems terribly out of place.
“It is especially troubling that more than half of Forrest High attendees are African American — the school is named for someone who would have kept their ancestors enslaved and who helped lead an organization, the KKK, that went on to terrorize, intimidate, and disenfranchise Black people for nearly a century.”
When the school opened in 1959, it was whites-only.
A Washington Post story published Thursday quoted a Duval County Public School District spokeswoman saying that the petition would have no bearing on any potential process to change the school’s name. Such an effort originates with a school board advisory council comprising elements of the community, and the responsibility ultimately rests with the school board.
The council previously asked the school board to change the school’s name to Firestone High, but the board voted against the request in Nov. 2008 by a tally of 5-2.
In a July 2013 interview with National Public Radio, Nikolai Vitti, the Superintendent of Duval Co. Public Schools, said that he would support a name change — but only through the formal process.
“I was alarmed that a name which could evoke such polarizing views and emotions was used to name a school,” Vitti said.
