The movement to erase history because great figures from the past didn’t comport to the sensibilities of the modern left continues to roll on. The latest example of this comes from an elementary school in New Jersey that is renaming itself because its namesake is a slaveholding founding father.
Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in South Orange, N.J. will rename itself for Delia Bolden, the first black female high school graduate in the area. The student body chose Bolden’s name from a list that included names of notable people with local connections and generic names not tied to a person.
The school district claims that students led the initiative to rename their school, although it’s hard to imagine a group of kids on the playground saying, “You know, that Thomas Jefferson sure was problematic.”
According to a report from Fox News, one school board member appears to have started the conversation over the summer.
“I want to make that point that Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves,” board member Qawi Telesford said at a June meeting on the issue. “He freed two while he was alive and seven after he died, which basically means I have a 1.5% chance of being free in Thomas Jefferson’s world. So, I am not thankful to him. I am thankful to the people who made sure that I could actually be free and be on the board with you today.”
“Seeing the work that (the students) did, I think, exceeded the expectations of all of us who participated in that conversation, when that was the final outcome, to really engage our students and make this a real-life civics lesson with really strong connections to governance,” stated Superintendent Ronald Taylor about the decision.
If there’s an upside to the decision, it’s that the students chose to name the school after someone who grew up in the school system.
Our founding fathers and other historical figures weren’t perfect, but their failings shouldn’t eclipse the great things they achieved. Here’s hoping the tide of historical revisionism and the erasure of important American figures come to an end sooner rather than later.
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