A Virginia school district announced Thursday that it would change the name of Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield to John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights giant who died last week.
The name change, which is expected to take effect in September, has been in process for more than a year and a half, according to Tamara Derenak Kaufax, a member of the school board. Lewis, who was called “the conscience of Congress” by his colleagues, had been on a short list of names since March that also included former President Barack Obama and César Chávez, the organizer of farmworkers, he added.
“We thought, ‘Does the Confederation represent who we are?'” Derenak Kaufax said.
The school district, which is also named after Lee, a Confederate general, had no established policies and regulations for a name change, Derenak Kaufax said. The district also wanted to have a strong conversation about the school’s possible new name with the community and students, he said.
Kimberly Boateng, 17, a student body representative last year on the Fairfax County School Board, said she had reunited her class and pressured her peers to change the name.
“Initially, the name didn’t really affect me,” said Ms. Boateng, who will be a senior this fall at the future John R. Lewis High School. “Most people don’t call it the Robert E. Lee School, we just call it Lee because it was embarrassing. We always had to explain that we are not the name. “
The new student board representative, Nathan Onibudo, 17, said he was glad that the long process of renaming the school was finally over and that he could be proud of the man named after his school.
“The name in the school building is something that every student had to walk through, and they want that name to be someone they can aspire to,” Onibudo said. “That person must be someone that a student can embody.”
Mr. Lewis’s life of activism began as a student, protesting against Jim Crow’s vote deprivation and laws. At 21, Mr. Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders who traveled the south to protest segregation. When he was 23, Lewis was the sixth person to speak at the 1963 March in Washington, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his landmark “I Have a Dream” speech. Lewis, a Democrat, was elected to Congress in 1986 and represented the Fifth District of Georgia until his death on July 17.
Ms. Derenak Kaufax said she felt that Mr. Lewis’s legacy aligned much more closely with the values of the school than Lee’s. She called Mr. Lewis an icon to start “good trouble” and to make people understand her ideas so that they can eventually come together. That was a legacy the school needed and wanted, he said.
“I wanted a name where everyone who walked through those gates felt safe and supported,” added Ms. Derenak Kaufax, noting the school’s diversity, which is approximately 85 percent non-white. “I really believe that a school has to make students and staff feel comfortable and the community proud, and none of those things existed under the Robert E. Lee name.”
Ms. Boateng said that she had been eager to graduate next June, but for now she is more eager to simply enter her school again.
He imagined going back to school and seeing Mr. Lewis’s name on the front of the building. “The feeling of knowing I’m going to John R. Lewis High is incredible,” he said.
