By Opio Sokoni, MCSJ, JD
Special To The MediumÂ
The City of Jacksonville, Florida was once called the bold new city of the South. It was a booming winter film capital and boasted a vibrant African-American community. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court held the country will no longer have separate educational facilities because they are inherently unequal. It said that de jure racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Warren Court’s decision was unanimous (9 – 0).
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a mean shadow of racial enmity engulfed Jacksonville. By 1959, the Daughters of the Confederacy, out of spite, lobbied to change the name of Valhalla High School to honor the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan – Nathan B. Forrest.
Over the years, there had been unsuccessful attempts to rid the city of this name. Some tried to educate the public about other immoral expects of Forrest’s life. For instance, he was the top ranking soldier on the scene during what has been called the most heinous acts of brutality during the U.S. Civil War. Nathan B. Forrest allowed his men to massacre soldiers at Fort Pillow that had surrendered. Hundreds of mostly African American troops would die, in addition to women and children. Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs of the incident that, “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards.”
Before the war, Forrest had made a fortune selling human beings into slavery and employed slave catchers. After the war, he was responsible for being among the first to use Black prisoners to work on his vast property – the beginning of the chain gang.
Fast forward to 2013 and Jacksonville has come as far as it has ever before in changing the name. The high school which carries Forrest’s name now has a majority of African Americans among its student body. It is also in the district of a Black school board member (Constance Hall) who recently called for a special vote to initiate a name change procedure. She has support from the new Superintendent Nikolai Vitti who has been embarrassed by having to address the issue while speaking abroad. The entire school board voted in favor of the name change procedure. After scheduled votes by alumni, students and faculty the Superintendent will make his recommendation to the board.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) has joined with the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition, the NAACP, Occupy Jacksonville, the Florida New Majority, LULAC, Change.org, Duval Progressives and more. We plan to appeal to the new spirit of the city. The coalition has included speeches and surveys, but now will involve street actions to educate the community and show movement in support of finally changing the name.
Imagine a high school in the city’s heavily Jewish Mandarin neighborhood named after Hitler, or an elementary school in New York City honoring Osama Bin Laden? Many of us feel no different having a school in the city named after Forrest.
After all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was martyred in the same state where Nathan B. Forrest made his mark – Tennessee. There is where Forrest’s climate of hate flourished; before, during and after the Civil War. His ghost has infected that state and our city well after his death in 1877. Forrest has no connection to Jacksonville and must now be totally severed. Those who support his name staying on the school will thank us later. We are making this a city where their children and their grandchildren’s grandchildren can co-exist as brothers and sisters with all races. Those who love this southern town are poised to move it in the right direction – forward.
