In the July 20 edition of the Mt. Vernon Gazette, Jay Spiegel writes to inform us of his opposition to the “political correctness” of those who are working to rename J.E.B. Stuart High School.
Rather than go through the history of the high school, its naming, and the various recent issues here, I urge readers to review the brief Wikipedia article — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._E._B._Stuart_High_School.
My personal views are:
J.E.B. Stuart High School was named in October 1958, during a time when the school board (and much of official Virginia) opposed desegregation. Its name continues to be an explicit reminder of those times, especially for the diverse student population that now attends the school.
J.E.B. Stuart was not simply a slave owner, as Mr. Spiegel points out many of our Presidents were slave owners at one time – including U.S. Grant. The issue for me is not whether others also owned slaves – it is whether or not they took up arms against the United States, and whether their name should be revered in the present day if they did so. It is the people of the present day who decide whether the honor of the name of an important building should be extended to such a person – we cannot be prisoners of bad decisions made in the past.
I do not find arguments about the cited cost of the name change to be compelling. I’m reminded of Oscar Wilde’s quip that a cynic was ‘a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Students can and do notice what adults value by looking at their school, and those observations help shape their outlook on life and their impressions of their own value in the eyes of adults. Less than 0.04 percent of the FY18 budget is not a burdensome expense for the school board to find a way to fund.
I too attended a high school that no longer exists. My personal circumstances are not a persuasive argument against changing the name of the school to one much more appropriate for these times. My memories, friendships, and the life-long impact of those four years will remain even though the physical school closed long ago.
Finally, we learn about the good and bad of dozens of historical figures without honoring them by naming official buildings for them. Arguing that removing J.E.B. Stuart’s name from the high school “erases the name from history” is clearly fallacious.
D.S. Katzer
Alexandria