Florida high school votes to keep school named after Klansman
A school board in Florida voted Monday night to keep the name of a majority black high school named after Ku Klux Kan leader Nathan Bedford.
Fox News reported that “Forrest High got its name in 1959, when the Daughters of the Confederacy, angry about the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision forcing school integration, pushed for the name.�
According to the Associated Press, “after hearing about three hours of public comments, Duval County School Board members voted 5-2 to the retain the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.� The two votes against the name where made by the school board’s only two African American members.
More than 140 people huddled in the board room to listen to arguments on both side, and 20 other people watched the meeting on a television in another room.
Brenda Priestly Jackson, one of two African Americans on the school board told the Associated Press that “(Forrest) was a terrorist and a racist."
Jackson also told Fox News, “I was actually in shock when I read the item, we had three hours of public comment, and I kid you not, you would have thought you'd gone back to some other place and time."
June Cooper, who is white, told the Associated Press that “Cooper was a good man, and that he was a military genius."
The Associated Press reported that “Some had suggested naming the school after the street it sits on, or honoring a graduate whose plane was shot down in 1991 over Iraq on the first night of Operation Desert Storm.�
This is the second time in two years that the school board has voted on this issue.