HISD school name vote reignites Confederacy debate

Groups vow to fight change despite fewer efforts to continue honoring state’s architects of rebellion

Rising through the mist of battlefields old is the faint gray ghost of the Lost Cause, summoned again by a familiar argument over historical truth and the importance of memory.

For many people, this spirit was a welcome presence — a comforting reminder of shared loss and common purpose — while for others it dredged up images from a time of subjugation and brutality.

Today, 151 years since soldiers in tattered uniforms trudged home in defeat, the Houston ISD board’s decision to rename a handful of schools with Confederacy connections has reignited debate over how — or whether — to keep honoring individuals whose achievements were overshadowed by their commitment to a cause predicated on slavery.

And sometimes, as in the case of one local middle school, the debate gets ugly.

A group from Sidney Lanier Middle School in the Montrose area earlier this month demanded a public apology from Trustee Jolanda Jones, the most vocal proponent of the name changes. In calling for her to appear at a student assembly, they cited statements Jones made at an earlier board meeting asserting that she had received emailed complaints claiming that Lanier students in favor of the change have been bullied by others who oppose it.

The group spent weeks combing through Jones’ HISD emails, obtained through a public information request, and found no such complaints. They then contacted the school administration and said they were told there had

been no reported instances of bullying.

“To be accused of something they would not do, I find it absolutely shameful,” Lanier parent Chrysi Polydoros said at a Monday news conference. “It’s disgraceful, it’s saddening, and it’s sickening that our school board trustee … would make such accusations.”

Jones has not responded to the demand specifically, saying only that “this debate has once again exposed the ugly racial divide that exists in our country and our community.” Lanier the most vocal

The HISD board voted 5-4 earlier this year to change the names of several schools, including those named for the president of the Confederate States of America and two of its illustrious generals. The decision brought to mind scores of similar actions, as recently as last year, when South Carolina legislators voted to discontinue the official use of a Confederate flag and University of Texas administrators chose to move a statue of Jefferson Davis from a prominent outdoor spot.

Many of the memorials and monuments honoring the Confederate dead and its leaders were erected over a century ago during a surge of nostalgia for the Lost Cause and to pave the way for the rise of Jim Crow laws. Some states, including Texas, even designated official holidays in remembrance of Confeder- ate “heroes.”

The integral relationship of the CSA to Southern identity endured through most of the 20th century — to diehards, it still does — but as the nation has grown more diverse and more connected to a rapidly changing world, that grasp has never seemed more tenuous. Continued veneration of the old icons has now become a hard sell.

“Schools that have the names of high-ranking Confederates should change, and statues should go down and be placed in a museum — that is the right spot for them,” argues Eric Walther, a professor of Southern history at the University of Houston.

Beyond that, however, Walther advises deliberation. Sins of revolutionary leaders should not be imputed to those who merely answered the call, he said.

Which leads directly to the matter that has dominated recent attention surrounding the HISD trustees’ decision.

Although alumni, students, and parents at most of the schools have expressed opposition to the change, those at Lanier have been the most vocal. They insist Lanier was far more noted for his poetry than service to the Confederacy. He was a low-level soldier and spent much of the Civil War in a POW camp.

As it happens, at least three members of the majority — Rhonda Skillern-Jones, Diana Davila, and Jones — have ties to the 90-year-old school. Davila and Skillern-Jones had children who attended Lanier while Jones is an alum.

Responding to the parents in the tense Feb. 11 board meeting, Jones gave an emotional explanation for her decision.

“I find it incredibly interesting that the majority of people who are proud of Sidney Lanier are white,” Jones said. “Slave masters raped us, they separated families. That is what they did. They killed us, they murdered us.” ‘Real history lesson’

Jones went on to mention the emails she had received from “people who are afraid” of voicing their support for the change because opponents look at them in a “twisted and funny” manner.

“I will not allow you step on those kids who get bullied at Lanier for believing that they want to go to a school …”

The sentence was left unfinished, but Jones charged on.

“The holocaust happened. It’s important that we recognize that. The slave trade happened. It’s important that we recognize that. And oh, don’t forget, this used to be Mexico, and we stole land from them. So, let somebody want to change the names of some schools where Mexicans were slaughtered and I’m gonna vote for that too,” Jones said.

Skillern-Jones, president of the board when the renaming issue was quietly put on the agenda, did not respond to a request for comment. Jones’ response was a prepared statement through a California-based PR agency and did not refer to the bullying allegation.

“As an African American, I’m just as offended by the people these schools are named after as the Confederate flag itself,” Jones said.

While Lanier parents complained at the tone of her remarks at the meeting, others who watched from afar saw them as useful — another reminder that this issue offers little in the way of middle ground.

“I’m utterly shocked and saddened that Lanier used brainwashed kids to speak uninformed nonsense,” said Stephon Davis, the dean of culture at KIPP Houston High School, in an email of support to Jones. “The kids in that room needed the real history lesson you gave them.”

As for the other schools on the HISD name-change list, John H. Reagan High School also has seen a spirited effort in opposition. Approximately 13,000 signatures have been obtained through an alumni “save the name” campaign, and leaders of the fight also have started a fundraising drive to pay legal fees for a court fight.

Unlike Lanier, Reagan was a more prominent figure though not a soldier. He served as postmaster general in the CSA cabinet and was a defender of secession. After the war, he renounced his support for the Confederate cause and urged more rights for former slaves.

As far as historian Wal- ther is concerned, the most important thing to come from any discussion of names, statues, memorials, mascots, and old heroes who were on the wrong side of history is not a zerosum conclusion to a feisty debate, but an appreciation for what that fight was about, why it took place, what it meant, and how it helped define the nation that America became.

“We don’t want to forget about this war,” said Walther, noting its place as the country’s bloodiest conflict. “One side was fighting for a more universal cause of freedom and the other was not. We should tell the story and let it be. We shouldn’t purge people or their history. We shouldn’t be Stalinist about this.” Respect for opinions

The discussion has a special resonance for Walther, whose Jewish parents narrowly escaped Nazi Germany in 1938, just before the beginning of World War II. He disputes those who would equate the Old South with the Third Reich, even if the parallel would have made sense to the enslaved. But he thinks the time has passed to keep honoring the architects of the rebellion, who explicitly stated in secession documents that they believed in the divinely bestowed superiority of the white race as well as the right to subjugate the non-white.

“I would not go to Germany if they had statues of Hitler and Himmler and all of those guys,” he said. “There are no public celebrations (today) of the German leadership of that time. Please understand, I am not saying the South was like Nazi Germany, but as symbols go, let’s move the flag off the pole.”

While groups from other schools fight on behalf of the traditional names despite the CSA associations, Lanier parent Adrienne Murry she said her group has no desire to whitewash history or defend the schools named after CSA luminaries. They simply believe that their school has been shoehorned into the wrong category for reasons she can’t quite understand.

“People just decided to change the name because they wanted to,” Murry said. “There has to be more to this.”

Or maybe not. In an email to other HISD trustees expressing concern that Lanier was included on the list, Skillern-Jones explained that to her it was matter of black and white. Because Lanier, whatever his accomplishments, fought on the Confederate side, the name should go.

Skillern-Jones also said that all sides should be listened to.

In an email to a supporter of the Lanier change, she called for respect of differing opinions.

“The whole Confederacy issue is a sensitive one … ,” she wrote. “It’s necessary to address it, but has to be done with consideration for people’s perspective. Tolerance must work both ways.”