A Florida high school whose name commemorates a leader of a white supremacist group known for lynchings and other violent acts against African Americans is to be renamed, officials said on Monday.
The Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in Jacksonville, Fla., founded 54 years ago, will change its name from that of the Ku Klux Klan's first grand wizard at the start of the next school year in August, Reuters reported.
A new name will be proposed in January.
"We recognize that we cannot and are not seeking to erase history," said Constance Hall, a board member for the Duval County School, where more than half the students are black. "For too long and too many, this name has represented the opposite of unity, respect, and equality."
With its roots in the U.S. Civil War era, the Ku Klux Klan has long been associated with hooded, white-robed night riders who menaced blacks with cross burnings, lynchings and other acts of violence, according to Reuters.
The honoring of Confederate heroes and emblems has been a divisive issue in the United States, with proponents saying it pays homage to regional history and opponents saying it amounts to racism, Reuters reported.
The Florida name change comes after incidents that sparked racial tension in the southern U.S. state. Confederate names from three city parks Memphis, Tenn., were dropped in February. One was named after Forrest, a slaveholder before the Civil War and a general during it.
Omotayo Richmond, who moved to Jacksonville from New York, wrote in a Change.org petition that garnered more than 160,000 signatures in support of changing the school's name that doing so would go toward healing "so much racial division" in Florida, Reuters reported.
"African American Jacksonville students shouldn't have to attend a high school named for someone who slaughtered and terrorized their ancestors one more school year," Richmond wrote.
The 1,300-student public school, which became racially integrated in 1971, voted some five years ago to keep the name, but those officials had been replaced, the petition said.
