By David A. Love
What does it say about a country that still names its schools after those who kidnapped black people and chained them right in their backyard?
This is the twenty-first century, and schools named after slave owners have been allowed to remain way past their due date. Case in point: George Washington High School.
Matt Haney, the president of the San Francisco Unified School District Board of Education — who happens to be white — received threats after he suggested that the school named after the nation’s first president be renamed in honor of Maya Angelou.
Angelou, America’s poet laureate, was once a student at George Washington H.S. — a school named after a slave owner.
Washington, the so-called father of our country, owned a lot of black folks — 123 slaves, to be exact. Some of Washington’s slaves ran away, including his chef, Hercules, who escaped from the presidential household in Philadelphia. This is a man we continue to honor on our money and who knows how many schools around the country.
Students at the high school were disturbed that the school had a mural depicting Washington with slaves, and so Haney suggested that there should be a name change.
“No schools named after slave owners,” he said.
During a year when the national anthem is coming into question for its glorification of slavery, the time is ripe for a discussion on this, maybe even a national protest. This debate is one that should be happening across the country.
Read the entire story here.
