So this is happening.
Fed up with racial extremists and tired of being reminded of a racial past, residents in Jacksonville, Florida launched a Change.org petition in an effort to rename Nathan B. Forrest High School, a name adopted from a former Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard and confederate general.
But according to Think Progress, members of the KKK aren’t about to just let the “home of the fighting Confederate Rebels” disappear without, well, a fight.
The organization is now attempting to keep his name on the school, which has decorated the building since 1959 when administrators changed the name to show their defiance to school integration laws enforced by Brown v Board of Education. But when Duval County School Board members received the petition brought forth by the KKK, they weren’t sure if it was a joke or a real plea.
All seven members of the board received a letter from the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan urging them not to consider a name-change. It calls the school’s namesake a “valiant man of honor,” and justifies the KKK as “a group of vigilance to protect defenseless southerners from criminal activities perpetrated against them by Yankee carpet baggers, scalawags, and many bestial blacks and other criminal elements out for revenge or just taking part in criminal mischief.”
Scalawag? Bestial blacks?
One school board member had this to say about the colorful (how ironic) letter:
“At first I thought it might be some sort of a gag or political stunt and then as I looked into it, I found out that it was an actual organization … I was outraged by it.”
And so are parents.
“I don’t want my daughter, or any student, going to a school named under those circumstances,” the petition’s author, resident Omotayo Richmond writes, “This is a bad look for Florida — with so much racial division in our state, renaming Forrest High would be a step toward healing.”
There will be a town hall community discussion held later this month about the school’s name.
SOURCE: Think Progress | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
