Agassiz Elementary parents, alumni push for name removal

A group of parents and alumni from Agassiz Elementary School is calling for the name to be removed from the Lakeview school because it honors a leading proponent of polygenism — the theory that different races aren’t from the same species.

“The feeling is that this institution that supposedly embraces diversity and is charged with the academic and social/emotional learning of students is excusing away the name of a man who did not feel Blacks even deserved rights,” said Tina Holder King, whose daughter is entering seventh grade at Agassiz. “It’s on that building that they walk through every day, that houses the people who are supposed to have their best interests at heart. There’s a conflict there. I’m not saying they don’t have their best interests at heart, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you do and then allow something like this.”

The group of parents calls itself CARE, Chicagoans for Anti-Racist Education. They launched a change.org petition on Friday and a website, removecpsracism.org.

“Our plan is to raise voices and awareness that there is a CPS school, that has as half of its population nonwhite children and a significant Black population, that has the name of a racist on it,” Holder King said. “We’re hoping that awareness will make it even more crystal clear than it already should be that the name needs to be removed.”

The group met Thursday with Mira Weber, Agassiz principal, to present its campaign. Weber declined to comment when I contacted her Thursday, pointing me to the Chicago Public Schools communications team. On Friday, CPS spokesman Michael Passman said a letter went out to Agassiz families that morning.

“As we enter this school year, we believe the time has come for our community, including the students, to revisit the issues, specifically the Agassiz name and the beliefs and practices of our namesake,” the letter reads. “As a community, we must ensure that every aspect of our school — including its name — fosters a welcoming and supportive environment, and we cannot accept any barriers that stand in the way. With that in mind, as responsible leaders and examples for our students, we are initiating the formal CPS process for school name changes.”

A push to rename the school was made by members of the Agassiz community in 2017, but the local school council ultimately voted 7-5 against it, arguing that the cost of changing the name was prohibitive and would damage the school’s name recognition and brand.

The new group, which includes several of the same parents, is hoping this year will be different.

“The anti-Blackness we see today is so much more evident to so many more people,” said Chirag Mehta, who was also part of the 2017 push to remove the name. “It’s easier for people to see the trajectory of how you get from a person like Agassiz, trying to use science to justify racist ideologies, to where we are today.”

Louis J. Agassiz was a Swiss biologist and geologist who lived from 1807 to 1873. He worked as a professor at Harvard University and is celebrated for his contributions to the study of natural science.

He also believed and argued that Black people were a “degraded and degenerate race” and strongly opposed interracial marriage. His teachings, which held that African and African-American people were genetically distinct from and inferior to white people, were repeatedly used to justify slavery.

“He was an important figure in laying the groundwork for the anti-Blackness that fueled the anti-abolitionist movement, that fueled the backlash against Reconstruction, that fueled the Jim Crow era,” Mehta said. “He played a pivotal role in providing pseudoscientific justification for a lot of the racism we see and experience today.

“He wielded power as a scientist,” Mehta continued, “and he used that to provide cover and justification for white supremacy. That they put his name on a school, an institution of education, is all the more reason for us to interrogate his history. And it’s all the more reason for us to take the name off the school.”

Chicago Public Schools’ policy for naming and renaming schools calls for members of the local school council to work with the principal and convene two community meetings to facilitate discussion about the proposed change. Parents who were present at Thursday’s meeting with Weber said she provided them with copies of the CPS policy.

“In my opinion, the process as outlined is part of the systemic problem,” Holder King said. “How do you have something as offensive as this come down to a vote of parents on a council?

“So many times,” Holder King continued, “when it comes to discussions of race or racist acts or racist words, the discussion gets clouded with what’s on the other side of ‘but.’ ‘Yes, this person made some racist comments, but they’re really good at their job, but they did all these other wonderful things.’ Now is the time for realization that there is no ‘but’ on the other side of racism. There’s a period after it. Do you want to keep this racist name or not? Come on. That’s a ridiculous choice.”

Mehta said CPS leadership should order the name change, rather than leave it to the principal and LSC. Another parent in the group pointed to CEO Janice Jackson’s language in an email sent to CPS families shortly after George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis.

“I’m challenging our community — parents, teachers, students — to call racist behavior out when we see it,” Jackson wrote in the May correspondence. “We’ve tolerated intolerance for far too long, and the time has come for us to act. This work is not easy, but that cannot be an excuse to delay progress. Black lives matter, and it’s past due for us to prove it with action.”

Holder King said discussions of cost and logistics should not be allowed to bog down the name’s removal.

“Difficult decisions, conversations, topics that people find divisive get excused away by the difficulty of something,” she said. “The difficulty of who would we name it after, how much would that cost, what’s the process, who gets to decide. We want to remove all that. We don’t care if the school is named ‘The No. 1.’ The goal is to get that name, where Black and brown children have to go to learn, off that school.”

Agassiz parent Kirsten Clay said the school could solicit sponsors to cover the cost of renaming the school — a new sign, new letterhead, and so on.

“This is the time for everyone to jump on this and take care of it,” Clay said. “If it wasn’t the right time three years ago, which it was, there are certainly no excuses now. Everyone’s listening now. Everyone’s paying attention now. It’s now or never.”

I agree. And it should be now. It requires impossible and illogical and, frankly, irresponsible mental gymnastics to teach children to learn and explore, interrogate and research, problem solve and create, under the heading of man whose own teachings were both flawed and harmful.

Stephen A. Douglas Park on Chicago’s West Side is on a likely path to becoming Frederick Douglass Park. Washington D.C.’s football team traded in a racial slur for “Washington Football Team.” Robert E. Lee High

School in Fairfax County, Virginia, just became John R. Lewis High School, named for the late civil rights leader.

Holder King is hopeful. “I think the swell of the movement to take an honest look at racism and systemic racism and the cumulative effect of that over the last 400 years is more front and center than it was three years ago,” she said. “I’m hopeful that will inspire more people to take an honest look at what’s going on and how important these types of things are, instead of brushing them away.

“When you know better,” she continued, “you do better, as my mother would say.”

“He wielded power as a scientist, and he used that to provide cover and justification for white supremacy.”

— Chirag Mehta, on Louis J. Agassiz