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These Oklahoma City Schools Are Named For Confederate Generals ... Or Are They?

Students walk through an entrance above which is engraved "Stonewall Jackson" at Jackson Elementary School in Oklahoma City.
Nick Oxford for NPR
Students walk through an entrance above which is engraved "Stonewall Jackson" at Jackson Elementary School in Oklahoma City.

District leaders in the Oklahoma City Public Schools will soon head out into the community to ask this question: Should the four elementary schools they believe are the namesake of Confederate generals be renamed?

The origin of that question goes back several weeks. Right after the violence broke out in Charlottesville, Va., Charles Henry, a school board member in Oklahoma City, voiced his concern about the name of Jackson Elementary, which he says had been bothering him for a while.

Initially he thought the school was named after Andrew Jackson, "which I think is equally offensive, personally. And then I looked it up and it wasn't named after Andrew Jackson. It was named after Stonewall. I researched him, too, and I was like, 'Yeah, that's wrong,' " he says.

Charles Henry, a board member of the Oklahoma City Public Schools, is a proponent of changing the name of Jackson Elementary School and several other schools in the district.
/ Nick Oxford for NPR
/
Nick Oxford for NPR
Charles Henry, a board member of the Oklahoma City Public Schools, is a proponent of changing the name of Jackson Elementary School and several other schools in the district.

Jackson Elementary is on the south side of Oklahoma City and Stonewall Jackson's name is engraved above the door where the school's students, who are a majority black and Hispanic, enter and exit the building. Henry says he doesn't think kids should learn in a place named after a Confederate officer who fought to keep slavery legal.

At that same school board meeting, Henry found out he wasn't alone. School leaders were concerned about the names of other schools in the district: Stand Watie Elementary, named for a Native American Confederate general, Wheeler Elementary and Lee Elementary.

Leaders moved quickly to make an announcement about the names — they wanted the community to help them decided whether to reassign them.

Before long, leaders came to find themselves in an interesting position. City historians turned up at least some evidence to suggest that two of the schools, Wheeler and Lee, might not be named for leaders of the Confederacy after all.

Lee Elementary in Oklahoma City where historians aren't sure if the school is named for Robert E. Lee, or Oscar Lee, a prominent Oklahoma businessman.
Sue Ogrocki / AP
/
AP
Lee Elementary in Oklahoma City where historians aren't sure if the school is named for Robert E. Lee, or Oscar Lee, a prominent Oklahoma businessman.

"Wheeler and Lee could be named for very important people in the city's history," says Larry Johnson, whose job is to research Oklahoma City for the local libraries. "And if they are, you don't want to do them a disservice by removing something that honored them."

Wheeler Elementary, originally thought to be named for Joseph Wheeler, may actually be the namesake of a prominent local businessman, James B. Wheeler, whose name is also on Wheeler Park, a popular Oklahoma City attraction not too far from the school.

Lee Elementary will take some more digging, he says. Right now, no one can locate anything that definitively says, " 'We're naming it Robert E. Lee.' "

Across the country, Americans are wrestling with similar realities. That is, faded histories, changed meanings and the question of who decides which monuments of the Confederacy, whether statues or elementary schools, stay or go. In Oklahoma City, does it make sense to change the name of the two schools if there's a chance they're named for local leaders?

"The staff is really passionate to keep it Wheeler," saysDeserae Jackson, the principal at Wheeler Elementary. "No one knew who it was named after to begin with and so when I told the staff, everybody was shocked." There are some staff who've been at Wheeler for 30 years, she says, "and nobody had any idea."

The district superintendent, Aurora Lora, says she doesn't want to force a name change on anyone — even for the two schools that they know are named after Confederate generals. That's why the district will go to the community for their input.

But so far the community seems divided. Some say the names should be changed. Others say no one cared until the district began looking into it.

Copyright 2021 KOSU. To see more, visit KOSU.

In graduate school at the University of Montana, Emily Wendler focused on Environmental Science and Natural Resource reporting with an emphasis on agriculture. About halfway through her Master’s program a professor introduced her to radio and she fell in love. She has since reported for KBGA, the University of Montana’s college radio station and Montana’s PBS Newsbrief. She was a finalist in a national in-depth radio reporting competition for an investigatory piece she produced on campus rape. She also produced in-depth reports on wind energy and local food for Montana Public Radio. She is very excited to be working in Oklahoma City, and you can hear her work on all things from education to agriculture right here on KOSU.