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.