Teen Launches Campaign to Change the Name of Her High School

Kayla Wilson started a Change.org petition to change the name of her Robert E. Lee High School. (Photo: KSAT)

A Texas teen has taken a stand regarding the name of her school — the Robert E. Lee High School — creating a petition on Change.org to lobby for it being changed.

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In the wake of the Charleston church shootings, writes incoming senior Kayla Wilson on the page for the petition — which has gotten more than 920 signatures in two weeks — she says that the name is “not ‘patriotic’.” The high school, she notes, “is named after a Confederate general who not only fought to preserve the enslavement of human beings but fought against the United States. We often forget that the Confederacy was doing an act of treason, an act of betrayal.” Robert E. Lee, she adds, “owned slaves himself and fought greatly to keep them, and had he won, the owning, selling, raping, and lynching of black people would [have] prevailed. Such a thing should not be honored.”

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Wilson could not be reached for comment by Yahoo Parenting. But she told KSAT that her problems with the school do not end with its name. “Our mascot is a Confederate soldier, and also the name of our dancers and cheerleaders — Dixie Drillers and Rebel Rousers — I just think that’s a little bit inappropriate,” she said. “I have been contacted by alumni and people in San Antonio and they [agree that] the name should have been changed a long time ago. It’s long overdue for a name change.” She also wants the Confederate flag mosaic removed from the school’s courtyard.

The school also has a Confederate flag mosaic in its courtyard. (Photo: Change.org)

She said she was inspired to start her petition after Housing and Urban Development Secretary and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro called for a name change on his Facebook page in June.

The high school is part of the North East Independent School District, which is 28 percent white, 58 percent Hispanic-Latino, 7 percent African-American, 4 percent Asian, and 3 percent mixed race, according to spokesperson Aubrey Chancellor.

She tells Yahoo Parenting that the school name will stay, noting, “The board does not feel it’s appropriate to change the name. The board has no intention of changing the name.” Chancellor says she’s heard from community members on both sides of the argument who plan on attending an upcoming school board meeting on August 10 to share their thoughts in a public forum. “They are welcome to do so in comments made from the floor,” she notes, “but it won’t be an agenda item.”

Photo: KSAT

Wilson is not the only one lobbying to change a school named after the Confederate soldier. Another Change.org petition — this one with only about 100 signatures so far and started by a man named Earl Hutchinson — is seeking to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Long Beach, Calif.

“Can you believe that there’s a school in one of the nation’s most ethically diverse cities in California and the nation that is named after Robert E. Lee?” the petition asks. But it’s not all that surprising, according to a recent LA Times editorial, as the school was founded in 1898 by Peter Burnett, California’s first civilian governor and “an open racist.” The editorial goes on to discuss why changing the name is a good idea.

“Critics of name changing will characterize this as a politically correct scrubbing of history to conform to modern interpretations of good and evil,” it says. “To an extent, those arguments are correct. If it’s Gen. Lee today, it could be a slaveholder like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson next year, and after that, who knows? Few historical figures look good through a modern filter. But there’s a categorical difference between, say, Jefferson, who has never been honored for his slaveholding, and Lee, who led an army into battle to defend the proposition that white people should be allowed to buy and sell black people. It’s time to remove his name from California schools.”

Meanwhile, there’s a competing petition regarding the high school in San Antonio, called “Keep the Name of Robert E. Lee High School,” created by an individual named Benjamin White. It’s got more than 4,400 signatures.

But Wilson is sticking to her fight. “Although we can not erase our past,” she writes, “we must not celebrate parts of our past that were most treacherous, and continuing to let the Robert E. Lee name live on is doing just that.”

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