As I reported last month, Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville may have a new name as of November 3rd when the Duval County School Board will meet to make a determination. It would be changed to Firestone High School after the street it is on.
According to Ron Word of AP in "Southern general's name may come off Florida school" is is part of the south's never-ending soul-searching. Steven Stoll, a sociology professor at Florida Community College: "This guy was a brutish monster. Why would you want to keep honoring a person like this? It is an insult to black people."
Efforts to rename Robert E. Lee Elementary School and Jefferson Davis Middle School in Hampton, Virginia, have failed.
Forrest High School opened in the 1950s during the Civil Rights era and was all-white at the time. Now, blacks make up half the student body. Two seniors say that the general consensus at the high school, whose athletic teams are called Rebels, is to leave the name alone.
Jacksonville has three other schools named for Confederate generals.
I'm Thinking it Will be Firestone High. --Old B-Runner
The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.
