http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/13/petition-calls-upon-florida-school-to-drop-kkk-leader-name/
just when you thought there would be one day that there was not something of a radical nature coming out of Fla. you get psyched.Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Confederate General who became the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan, a racist organization of whites who oppose equality among the races. He died in 1877, but the KKK and racism lived on. In 1959, at the height of segregation and Jim Crow in the South, an all-white school in Jacksonville, Florida was named after Forrest in retaliation of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education which integrated public schools. 54 years later, the school still bears the name of the man who ruthlessly terrorized African-Americans, even though people of color make up more than half of the school’s population. And one parent wants to change things.
how do you teach children and gain their respect and pride in their school that was named out of a retaliation to the Supreme Court for desegregating the schools in the south, when they can with a few keystrokes or a library card find out the true intent of the building they are expected to teach them how to be better intelligent Americans is Racist numeral uno?
Omotayo Richmond has lived in Jacksonville for 12 years and he has a daughter who attends Nathan Bedford Forest High School. According to the petition, he started on change.org, he believes the residents of Jacksonville and the students “deserve better than a high school named for the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.”“I don’t want my daughter, or any student, going to a school named under those circumstances,” Richmond continues. “This is a bad look for Florida — with so much racial division in our state, renaming Forrest High would be a step toward healing.”
these kids will carry the social stigma of graduating from the school of the old southern rejection and their next step is out in the world. teachers what are on their minds or are the all ok with it which would make it that much more egregious.
