Minneapolis’ Patrick Henry High School to Get a New Name

Patrick Henry High School will be getting a new name, after the Minneapolis school board on Tuesday directed the school community to begin the name change process.

The school board’s school names advisory committee, which was formed in 2020, had recommended a name change for the North Side high school because Patrick Henry — an 18th-century Virginia politician and leading proponent of independence before the Revolutionary War — owned enslaved people.

According to the resolution approved Tuesday, “students, staff, and community members recognize the need for a school name that better represents the values of the community.”

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The push for — and pushback against — a new moniker for the school isn’t new. A group of students and staff in 2017 brought forward objections to the school’s association with Henry. Some school alumni vocally opposed the name change, arguing that it amounted to rewriting history {snip}

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Two other schools in the district, Sheridan Elementary and Jefferson Elementary, were respectively renamed Las Estrellas and Ella Baker this year. The process to change those names began in 2020.

Sheridan was named for Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, a Civil War officer who led the relocation of Native Americans off the Great Plains and encouraged the extermination of buffalo. Jefferson was named for the founding father and third U.S. president who owned slaves.

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