With Name Changes, Schools Transform Racial Reckoning Into Real-Life Civics Lessons 7 min read
Students are involved in renaming T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va. The storied school was originally named for a former superintendent who was an avowed segregationist.Photo by Addisnog – licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons Share article Copy URL
Each day that Lorraine Johnson stepped on campus at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., she struggled to shake the fact that the school’s namesake fought for decades to prevent black and white students from attending school together.
Johnson, a senior at the school, is among the Black students that led the push to change the name of the storied school, featured in the 2000 movie “Remember the Titans,” because of the segregationist views held by Thomas Chambliss Williams, the former school district superintendent for whom the school is named.