◆ Stonewall Jackson

Orlando’s Stonewall Jackson Middle fuels history debate

Middle School’s advisory council votes to pursue a name change for the 53-year-old school. A final decision on whether to change the name, and to what, will be up to the Orange County School Board.

Stonewall Jackson Middle School should get a new name, one that doesn’t invoke “slavery and segregation in the South,” said those who recently took a survey on whether the Orlando school should be rebranded.

Jackson’s school advisory council, after reviewing the results, voted Tuesday to pursue a name change for the 53-year-old school, said Lorena Arias, a spokesman for the Orange County school district. The council will do another survey to let residents vote on new name suggestions, she said. A final decision on whether to change the name, and to what, will be up to the Orange County School Board.

Nearly 47 percent of those who did the initial online survey want the school renamed, while 43.5 percent want to keep the name of the Confederate general from Virginia who died in 1863. About 10 percent had no opinion on the name, according to the results provided by the school district.

The school, which sits on Stonewall Jackson Road in what is now a largely Hispanic neighborhood of east Orlando, is the only one in Central Florida named for a Confederate war hero. A year ago, the school board voted to change the name of Robert E. Lee Middle School to College Park Middle School, after that school community requested the new moniker.

Amman Thomas, who has two kids who attended Jackson, got the name-change movement under way when he asked the school council to consider the idea. The council responded by requesting the district post the online survey.

“The school is great. The staff there is great,” he said. “We were very pleased with the level of the education we got there.”

But as an African-American, he always found the name of the school “distasteful,” he said. “It’s the name of the school that I think does not reflect the diverse population of Orlando.”

Thomas said he was pleased the council asked residents’ opinion and is moving to change the name, at their suggestion.

Confederate names and statutes — which some view as symbols of slavery and white supremacy but others as key slices of U.S. history — have been the