“We have made the decision to change our school name to one that will better reflect our school’s values and the diverse students and families we serve,” Espinosa wrote, according to BillyPenn.
Jackson was the seventh president of the United States, holding office from 1829 to 1837. Prior to his election, he was major general in the War of 1812 and became a national hero after leading U.S. troops in the defeat of the British in the Battle of New Orleans.
Jackson has no significant connection to Philadelphia, and more troubling is his history of mistreating Indigenous people and his ownership and harsh treatment of enslaved Black people.
WHYY
By
Philadelphia’s school buildings are a tribute to its past.
That’s true of the structures themselves, some of which date back over a century.
But it’s also a nod to the people commemorated in the names of those school buildings. Those names in ways big and small help tell the city’s history.
The vast majority of public schools in the city are named after white men. (The school-namers of yore were partial to Union Civil War soldiers and former school board officials.)
Still, in a city that didn’t have a statue of a Black person on public land until 2017, school buildings are among the rare public spaces with any echo of Philadelphia’s Black history.