By Noah Price, Monuments Toolkit
Monuments are more abstract than obelisks or statues created in someone’s likeness. Anytime a historical figure’s name is attached to something, whether it be a building or a park, that site becomes a monument in the public’s eye. Perhaps the most populous monument, however, are school buildings.
Earlier this year, the Southern Poverty Law Center published their third edition of the Whose Heritage? report. Documenting all public symbols of the Confederacy, they notated that schools currently account for 201 of the 2,089 remaining Confederate symbols, or 10%. If we expand the list to consider schools named after oppressive figures in general rather than just Confederates, the number is much larger.
However, this number is much smaller than it was before. Primarily since the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, many schools around the United States have renamed themselves. This blog post highlights just a few.
Kit Carson International Academy – Las Vegas, Nevada
The Monuments Toolkit recently discussed the legacy of Kit Carson in a podcast episode from May 2025. While largely credited with expanding the United States into the American Southwest, Carson did so largely at the demise of several Indigenous communities. Currently, there are forests, trails, mountains, and even the capital city of Nevada named in his honor. Until recently, an elementary school in central Las Vegas was named after him as well.
In 2020, the Clark County School Board voted to rename the school to Helen Anderson Toland International Academy. Anderson Toland was the first Black American principal in Clark County and served primarily at the school that would become named after her.
Columbus Elementary School – Chicago, Illinois
In 2020, the Chicago Sun Times published a report notating 30 schools in the Chicago Public School system named for slave holders. This created a domino effect in the effort to rename the schools in the area, beginning with Harriett Tubman Elementary School to become the first new name in 2020. The school board most recently renamed Columbus Elementary School in November 2024.
Now, the school is named for the late Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The school system renamed two other schools at the same time, one now named after James Farmer Jr. and the other for its location, Logan Square.
Robert E. Lee High School – Montgomery, Alabama
In 2022, after two years of discussion, the Montgomery County Board of Education voted to rename Robert E. Lee High School. Now, the school is named for Montgomery-born chemist Percy Julian.
An important note to make about schools named after Confederate figures is that they tend to serve predominantly black populations. Robert E. Lee High School was no exception with
Conclusion
I grew up attending Ulis Newton Elementary School in Henderson, Nevada. Newton had a passion for astronomy, so our mascot was an astronaut and we called ourselves the “Newton Navigators.” From ages four to ten, I walked the hallways lined with photographs of space shuttle liftoffs and murals of the stars. For many of those years, I professed to my parents that I was going to become an astronaut myself. While I may now be a historian, space history is very much a passion I still follow.
Knowing my experience based on a school named simply after a Las Vegas educator with a passion for the stars, I can only imagine the influence of Confederate or other oppressively named schools on the students that walk their hallways. It is not unintentional that the schools named for these figures often serve the identities of the students the historical figures oppressed.
As we continue to work to remove, relocate, and reinterpret oppressive monuments around the country and world, we ought not forget to include the renaming of schools in the process