Seaman Unified School District 345 may change its name.
In a newsletter sent to members of the Seaman community Wednesday, Adams said the district s next board meeting will focus on discussing how best to move forward. At the March 15 board meeting, he said, we will discuss a process around the district namesake that will ensure all members of our school community have an opportunity to be heard and represented in the discussion.
Adams said he plans to recommend the district s superintendent appoint a task force that would be in charge of gathering feedback from community members, providing public reports to the school board and presenting a final recommendation regarding a potential name change.
Updated: 11:10 PM CST Mar 1, 2021 By Jackson Kurtz For decades in Topeka, rumors about Seaman School District s namesake Fred A. Seaman, have been floating around the community. The first time I heard about it, I was like woah, why isn t this a bigger deal? said Rene Cabrera, a Seaman High School student. But it wasn t until a report by two journalism students at Seaman High School, that proved those rumors to be true. That Fred A. Seaman was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Finding out all this information at once was really shocking, said Madeline Gearhart, who co-wrote the story. The students reporting showed Seaman s involvement with the Klan throughout the 1920s -including him being a top KKK leader. It was definitely shocking, there have been rumors but it was easy to dismiss because the school was integrated, said Tristan Fangman, co-writer. Dr. Shawn Alexander, professor and chair of African-American Studies at University of Kansas says the KKK in the
Because what we’re thinking is that next time you (correctly) accuse U.S. Senate Republicans of pretending that accountability just wasn’t possible for former President Donald Trump, look in the mirror and behold someone who just did exactly the same thing.
Kansas House Republicans, you are even more responsible for this unacceptable outcome. It was Republican Rep. John Barker, who chaired the committee investigating Coleman, who declined to let even one of Coleman’s victims testify at the mini-hearing on this matter. Barker said the committee shouldn’t look at any behavior before Coleman or any other member was in office, though it doesn’t have to be that way.