Read on Twitter
30 public schools in Chicago are named for slaveholders; surprised @ChiPubSchools promises changes https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/12/30/22189499/cps-school-names-slaveholders-chicago-public-schools-maurice-swinney-john-marshall-agassiz-acero?utm_campaign=chicago.suntimes&utm_content=entry&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
We also found that schools named for white people — mostly men — outnumber those named for African Americans by 4-1, Latinos 9-1 and indigenous people 120-1 in the school system where 9 of 10 kids are people of color.
“It’s dehumanizing, and it’s something that we have to work on and change,” says @docswin, the top CPS official for racial equity. “And we got to disrupt it, we got to stop it, we got to change it....
..."And, for me, it’s important that all of this work be through a process that really starts to teach what this history really means, that starts to reckon with racist ideas..."
"...and that helps people to really have conversations with race that are not generally happening outside of friend circles," @docswin says.
You can look up your own @ChiPubSchools name here, TONS of Chicago history and some super fascinating individuals: https://graphics.suntimes.com/education/school-names/
Couple of shockers in here, for me anyway. People I had never considered growing up in Philadelphia, people my PA education skimmed right over during the "slavery chapter". Benjamin Franklin the abolitionist? The Quaker founder of PA William Penn? Edgar Allen Poe?
Now I know how much more there is to their stories. And so you do. And in case you're thinking how there are way worse bigger problems in the world and in Chicago, at this moment than school names, A. yes, there are but B. this matters to the kids who attend @ChiPubSchools
“That’s our heritage,” says Anyiah Jackson-Williams, John Marshall Metro HS's valedictorian from the class of 2020. “I’m African American. It really was a shocker to me. He’s one of the people that was a slave owner.”
John Hancock, Declaration signer from Massachusetts(!?!?) also enslaved people: “The community that this school is in is mostly minorities, and most students support the Black Lives Matter movement and are anti-racists,” says Tamara Ward, who’s African American and Puerto Rican.
“So the name of a slave owner goes against what we stand for and doesn’t represent us at all,” says Ward, 15.
But even worse than the school name, she says, is that her SW Side school, whose student population is mostly Latino, doesn’t have a park or a pool
But even worse than the school name, she says, is that her SW Side school, whose student population is mostly Latino, doesn’t have a park or a pool
like North Side schools with mostly white students do.
“It makes me a little bit angry. The Brown neighborhoods have less than the white neighborhoods, and it really shows the institutionalized racism in our city,” Ward says.
“It makes me a little bit angry. The Brown neighborhoods have less than the white neighborhoods, and it really shows the institutionalized racism in our city,” Ward says.
Hancock senior Cortez Stewart has recorded a podcast ( https://soundcloud.com/user-960232977/who-should-or-shouldnt-use-the-n-word-chicago-public-schools-students-discuss) about being Black at Hancock, school names are “just another reminder” of the gap between America’s ideal vision of itself and reality.
“We still have George Washington on the single dollar bill and stuff like this,” says Stewart, 17, one of Hancock's few Black students. “It definitely makes me think about how this country can still celebrate these figures with so much knowledge of what they have done in the past
CPS has done better choosing representational names as time has passed. Most of the biggest problematic names date back decades or longer.
That “does make me feel better," says @CPSHancock sophomore Adrian Salazar, "but, at the same time, now we have more information, and now that we have access to it, it feels like we should make a change...
...We’re named for somebody who did some good for our country but mistreated people of color just because of their race.”
Anyway, please go read it and scroll through the database, all of which took months to pull together. And please support the @Suntimes because YOU makes longer-term work like this possible. https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/12/30/22189499/cps-school-names-slaveholders-chicago-public-schools-maurice-swinney-john-marshall-agassiz-acero
Ah, before I forget: Today, for every Chicago public school named for a woman, nearly six are named for a man. And of the 510 Chicago schools named for people (more than 140 others have names tied to geography or the school’s purpose)...
... more than 360 memorialize someone who was white and 81 for someone Black, 39 Latino and three indigenous. “It just shows the roots of segregation within the city that still exists,” says Layan Nazzal, a junior at Taft High School and @MikvaChallenge activist.
“It’s like what Chicago’s built on, and the lasting effect is really harmful. Schools on the South Side are not getting the same attention schools on the North Side get,” Nazzal says.
And if you have more information about any of the people in our database https://graphics.suntimes.com/education/school-names/ please consider sending to [email protected]. My research relied on all kinds of archives but doesn't pretend to be perfect in any way.
