I don't like these revisionist purges based on one issue. Many great people throughout history have been full of contradictions. Lee is not only eligible for sainthood in the south, but was greatly admired by many Union soldiers.

What some may interpret as a purge may easily be seen as simple progress. The re-naming of a school neither enhances, nor denies the place in history of any one person, and will not result in historical revisionism.

for Lee in the 1950s did have a particular meaning: it was a vocal stand against integration.

There would be no other logical reason for it. In this particular case, if there is evidence the name was chosen as an act of defiance to integration, then the name has to go.

Adrian Florido | March 21, 2011

It was January 1957. For days, Jewell Hooper and her older sister Carrine had been driving up and down El Cajon Boulevard in search of a motel. Carrine’s husband had just moved the family to San Diego to start a job at Convair, an aircraft manufacturer. So it was up to the two sisters to find the family a better place to stay until they could move into a permanent place.

They were living at the St. James Hotel downtown. But refugees from the Hungarian Revolution were also staying there, and they had been shooting dirty glances at Hooper and her family for weeks. The family wanted a suite with a kitchen so they wouldn’t have to eat all their meals in public and get sideways glances there, too. So the sisters tried El Cajon Boulevard, which was lined with motels.

Not a single motel would rent them a room, despite the vacancy signs in the windows. Finally, one manager put it plainly. He had seen them driving back and forth in their Chevrolet for days.

“He said, ‘Lady, I don’t know where you’re from, but I’ve seen you and this other lady going up and down this street every day. You’re never going to find a vacancy here,'” Hooper remembered. “He asked if we knew where Market Street is, and I told him yes. He said, ‘Well you go south of Market Street and look for something.’ And we did. And we found a unit that day” ...

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/census-2010/how-segregation-defined-san-diegos-neighborhoods/

Statement of ACLU Managing Attorney Jordan Budd,
Counsel in Carlin v. San Diego Unified School District
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 9, 1999

SAN DIEGO -- Yesterday's report on student achievement by the San Diego Dialogue confirms our worst fears. Twenty years after the court in the Carlin school desegregation case ordered the San Diego Unified School District to closely monitor and correct disparities in student achievement based on race, white students attending schools in the District still receive a better education than students of color.

This achievement gap is a result of the unequal distribution of educational resources and lowered expectations regarding the abilities of poor and minority students. These findings make last year's termination of court oversight of the District's integration programs all the more troubling ...

https://www.aclu.org/news/three-decades-after-desegregation-lawsuit-san-diego-schools-are-still-separate-unequal

of downtrodden minorities that I've seen all day.

and it seems we currently have a good opportunity to push back

I can totally, completely, absolutely understand your need to look noble in that regard.

to recognize that Lee committed treason against the United States of America. Neo-Confederate apologists love to try to paint that over.

Particularly Lexington, since he spent a long time as an educator there after the war.

But CA? He never set foot in the state (and opposed its entering the Union). This was clearly an anti-immigration naming 60 years ago.

Just like Thomas Jefferson!

Y'know Maryland was a slave owner state too...so start purging any antebellum local famous folks up there as well.


The USA had slaves for about 100 years after it's inception. That's all there is to it.


Besides, Robert E Lee went thru a lot of anguish as to whether he should fight for the Union (and they wanted him) or for his home state. He obviously chose his state. Naming a school after him is not very PC, so rename it if the community want to. I just hope we don't start burning down antebellum mansions and things.... like they did here in Wilmington in the '60s.

and quite a few others.

as the name of an elementary school, they were simply following in the long post-Reconstruction tradition of using confederate symbols and confederate heroes as code-talk for white supremacy

Brown v. Board had been national news in 1954; the Montgomery bus boycott had been national news in 1955 and 1956

In some parts of the country, mobs often attempted to block desegregation. There were riots at University of Alabama in 1956 when iot was desegregated. In Mansfield TX, the violent opposition to desegregation beginning in 1956 prevented integration until 1965

This is not simply a matter of frowning on Robert E Lee for his personal slave-holding: he bears some real responsibility for the extended duration and cost of the Civil War; and the century-long campaign, to spread his name across the country as an American idol, cannot be distinguished from the Jim Crow movement that wrecked untold lives until somewhere in the twentieth century

I'm just saying that the rationale expressed by one of the students based upon the fact that Lee supported slavery is somewhat overbroad.