Virginia Board Renames Schools Honoring 2 US Presidents

Schools in Virginia honoring two U.S. presidents who sided with or praised the Confederacy are getting new names, along with an elementary that honored a superintendent who funneled money away from Black schools.

The Portsmouth School Board voted 8-1 Thursday night to change the names of Woodrow Wilson High School, John Tyler Elementary School and James Hurst Elementary School, news outlets reported. {snip}

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Wilson, a progressive reformer who established the federal income tax, the central banking system and was a leading architect of the League of Nations, was also the first Southerner to serve as president since the Civil War. A segregationist Democrat, he wrote a history textbook praising the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan, and worked to keep blacks students out while serving as Princeton University’s president.

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Waterview Elementary is the new name of the school named for John Tyler, the 10th president, who later sided with the Confederacy and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives shortly before his death in 1862.

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