PEORIA, Ill. — Emotions predictably ran high Wednesday night during the Peoria School District 150 Board of Education town hall meeting regarding the renaming of Thomas Jefferson Primary School.
The board on Sept. 21, 2020 voted to rename six buildings, the Jefferson building being one of them. It was recommended to the board December to rename it after Martin Luther King confidant and adviser Rev. C.T. Vivian and, in January, President Dr. Doug Shaw made it a proposal.
A vote at the Apr. 9 board meeting to formally change the name was tabled.
Peoria American Civil Liberties Union President Spanky Edwards spoke highly in favor of Vivian.
“Dr. Vivian adopted me as one of his grandsons,” he said, also mentioning Vivian’s achievement of desegregating Barton’s Cafeteria.
“He called Dr. King a kindred spirit.”
As Edwards revered Vivian, he excoriated Jefferson.
“Jefferson was a President who said all men are created equal, while owning a slave. He impregnated a slave and had six children he also enslaved,” he said.
“If you compare their resumes and what they’ve contributed to America, it’s not even close.
“Thomas Jefferson was a worse person than Hitler. And you wouldn’t send your kid to Hitler High.”
Terry Knapp, former Harrison teacher, expressed opposition to the name change, but said it would be futile to try and stop the board from renaming it.
“I never, when I taught, heard one student or one parent complain,” he said.
“Peoria led the nation one time in teenage births, many of which were incestuous… you don’t see people going to jail. People want to cancel culture.
“Let’s do the number system so the kids can get on with their education. Have the kids learned since we changed the [Woodrow Wilson] name to Maude Sanders?”
Kellar Primary parent Mike Murphy suggested an alternative route.
“If we are going to be renaming these schools, name them not after people, but after a number system, or maybe streets or trees, like Glen Oak,” he said.
“You’ll always find something offensive about somebody else.”
Ernestine Jackson, herself a former school board member, spoke in favor of the name change from a personal perspective.
“Coming out of Mississippi in the very early 40s, I know what it’s like, I know what’s going on, and this is not just about renaming schools. We have not taught history like it should have been taught in the first place, and that’s to explain to kids what their forefathers went through,” she said.
“While other masters were freeing some of their slaves, Jefferson could not do it, because he wanted to hang onto his property and money. If you flipped things, and made Thomas Jefferson Black, and [Jefferson slave] Sally Hemings white, his name would not have been on that school.
“This wasn’t the case of someone marrying early. This was the case of the President of the United States having sex with a 15-year-old.”
Lee Powers, a former Roosevelt teacher and basketball coach, said while he acknowledges he can’t fairly say he understands how people of color might feel about Jefferson, he believes Jefferson was a product of his generation.
“The standard and time in which they lived, it’s not always fair to [judge them based on that],” he said.
“If you judged my father now from his era, he’d be in jail. To judge something out of its era completely, I’m not sure that’s all fair.
“We all fall short.”
Board Member Dan Walther said the Building Committee would take into consideration the comments made and present a report at the next full school board meeting.
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