Good grief. It has started in Dallas.
Editorial: DISD should rename Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson elementaries
/Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
The Confederate flag flies on the South Carolina Capitol grounds one day after Gov. Nikki Haley announced last week that she will call for the flag to be removed.
Published: 25 June 2015 01:53 PM
The reordering of Confederate imagery across the American South has been stunning in its swiftness.
As South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley asserted: The time has come.
The time has come to quit flaunting symbols that uphold romantic visions of the Old South. The time has come to quit pretending that secessionist states were driven by noble motives. The Civil War should be seen for what it was — a brutal, wasteful war over a southerner’s right to own, buy and sell human beings like livestock.
Political leaders of Haley’s state — the first to leave the Union, in 1860 — sent a powerful message in calling for the Confederate battle flag to be removed from their Statehouse grounds. It’s heartbreaking that it took the murders of nine black churchgoers in Charleston to move their state to this moment.
There are lessons from this grief for the rest of the South, Texas included, and it’s good that debate is reignited on what to do with our own symbols honoring those who fought for a failed slaveholding society.
Closest to home are the neighborhood schools named for historic figures once regarded as heroes of the South. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s name is on campuses across Texas, including in Dallas, Grand Prairie and Denton. Also in Dallas sits Stonewall Jackson Elementary, named for a Confederate general.
Parents have spoken up time and again about the indignity of sending their children to schools named for racist defenders of human bondage. Dallas school trustees should respond by beginning the process of finding appropriate names. The time has come.
The district knows how to do this. Remember Oak Cliff’s Jefferson Davis Elementary School, named for the Kentucky-born president of the Confederacy? DISD renamed the campus in 1999 for the late Texas congresswoman and civil rights leader Barbara Jordan.
Statues scattered across former Confederate states pose different challenges. Political leaders should resist the impulse to whitewash history by pulling down statuary and other memorials. History can’t be changed, but it can be put in better context.
That’s the very discussion University of Texas President Gregory Fenves has invited regarding what to do with a statue on the UT campus honoring Davis. Students have circulated a petition calling for the statue’s removal. This newspaper has favored a plan to leave it in place and add plaques that provide context and meaning.
The Texas Capitol has its own soaring memorials to Confederate soldiers and their leaders, but what the grounds lack is context, a fuller telling of Texas history.
That’s why it’s good news that the Legislature added money in the state budget this year to help complete fund-raising for the first memorial to African-Americans on the Capitol grounds. The time has come.
Symbols are indeed, important. And in the admirable zeal to do away with troubling images of the Old South, let’s also not forget the urgent need to find solutions for today’s very real racial inequalities born from that same sad history. Otherwise, the rush to remove painful imagery is an empty gesture.
Editorial: DISD should rename Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson elementaries
/Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
The Confederate flag flies on the South Carolina Capitol grounds one day after Gov. Nikki Haley announced last week that she will call for the flag to be removed.
Published: 25 June 2015 01:53 PM
The reordering of Confederate imagery across the American South has been stunning in its swiftness.
As South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley asserted: The time has come.
The time has come to quit flaunting symbols that uphold romantic visions of the Old South. The time has come to quit pretending that secessionist states were driven by noble motives. The Civil War should be seen for what it was — a brutal, wasteful war over a southerner’s right to own, buy and sell human beings like livestock.
Political leaders of Haley’s state — the first to leave the Union, in 1860 — sent a powerful message in calling for the Confederate battle flag to be removed from their Statehouse grounds. It’s heartbreaking that it took the murders of nine black churchgoers in Charleston to move their state to this moment.
There are lessons from this grief for the rest of the South, Texas included, and it’s good that debate is reignited on what to do with our own symbols honoring those who fought for a failed slaveholding society.
Closest to home are the neighborhood schools named for historic figures once regarded as heroes of the South. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s name is on campuses across Texas, including in Dallas, Grand Prairie and Denton. Also in Dallas sits Stonewall Jackson Elementary, named for a Confederate general.
Parents have spoken up time and again about the indignity of sending their children to schools named for racist defenders of human bondage. Dallas school trustees should respond by beginning the process of finding appropriate names. The time has come.
The district knows how to do this. Remember Oak Cliff’s Jefferson Davis Elementary School, named for the Kentucky-born president of the Confederacy? DISD renamed the campus in 1999 for the late Texas congresswoman and civil rights leader Barbara Jordan.
Statues scattered across former Confederate states pose different challenges. Political leaders should resist the impulse to whitewash history by pulling down statuary and other memorials. History can’t be changed, but it can be put in better context.
That’s the very discussion University of Texas President Gregory Fenves has invited regarding what to do with a statue on the UT campus honoring Davis. Students have circulated a petition calling for the statue’s removal. This newspaper has favored a plan to leave it in place and add plaques that provide context and meaning.
The Texas Capitol has its own soaring memorials to Confederate soldiers and their leaders, but what the grounds lack is context, a fuller telling of Texas history.
That’s why it’s good news that the Legislature added money in the state budget this year to help complete fund-raising for the first memorial to African-Americans on the Capitol grounds. The time has come.
Symbols are indeed, important. And in the admirable zeal to do away with troubling images of the Old South, let’s also not forget the urgent need to find solutions for today’s very real racial inequalities born from that same sad history. Otherwise, the rush to remove painful imagery is an empty gesture.
