Who was Nathan Bedford Forrest?

[thelakelander]

After all, Dignan is a part of our culture and history and renaming is bad for Jacksonville.

[Sgarey123]

You guys are just being ridiculous at this point. You hate being southern...I get it. However you shouldnt ruin it for the rest of us.

Jacksonville has had a lot of influences. Don't demonize just one of them! How about reading the Statue in Hemming sometime.

Try being inclusive like so many have done for years for Black americans....btw check this out...Lets name the next school after one of these guys!

http://www.florida-scv.org/Camp1316/Black%20Confederates.htm 

Renaming Forrest is really bad for Jacksonville.  It reeks of intolerence. It also reeks of propaganda. A man is not measured by a club he started to protect his people and then left when he disagreed with it.

He was much more than that...He fought for this place...for the South...where Jacksonville sits. He risked everything to protect his people. He sounds like a strong hero that should be honored.

[Tacachale]

It's interesting that this claim to preserving "our" local "history" is tied to a guy who lived hundreds of miles away in another state, and a school that's only 54 years old.

[I-10east]

It's interesting that this claim to preserving "our" local "history" is tied to a guy who lived hundreds of miles away in another state, and a school that's ONLY 54 years old.

I really can care less either way if it's changed, but 54 years isn't exactly a really short time; If you're anti-Forrest, that fact isn't the best way to tackle the renaming controversy.

[thelakelander]

^54 years is a short time when it comes to our overall history. Also, Forrest is Forrest. No one is erasing his past or rewriting history books.  Fort Pillow still happened. Him having nothing to do with Jax isn't changing. It's just the renaming of a local school that shouldn't have been named after the guy in the first place. 

[I-10east]

^54 years is a short time when it comes to our overall history.

We'll agree to disagree. I think it's a pretty considerable length of time, esp considering most Jax high schools aren't terribly old.

[Sgarey123]

Hmmmm its like the lot of you are part of a lynch mob trying to convince yourselves you are right. You are wrong. Every point and reason is refuted. Find something else to pile on and smother.

[thelakelander]

^54 years is a short time when it comes to our overall history.

We'll agree to disagree. I think it's a pretty considerable length of time, esp considering most Jax high schools aren't terribly old.

That's fine. But that's not going to be a strong enough reason to keep the name.

[thelakelander]

Hmmmm its like the lot of you are part of a lynch mob trying to convince yourselves you are right. You are wrong. Every point and reason is refuted. Find something else to pile on and smother.

Umm, ok. Just don't pull out the musket and cannon balls in retaliation if the community decides to move on from the Forrest name.

[Tacachale]

We (those of us who prefer a change, not every one agrees) are right that:

1) Forrest was not from Jacksonville or Florida and had no particular connection to area
2) The name was only chosen in 1959, when the school opened.

Those facts are pretty inarguable. Further, a number of us note that:

Forrest opened as a whites-only school, despite the Supreme Court ruling school segregation unconstitutional in Brown vs. the Board of Education 5 years earlier. In fact, a number of other segregated schools were created around this time, and several of the white schools were named for Confederates. Jacksonville didn't have a proliferation of Confederate-named schools before then - all I can name is Lee High, which opened in 1927. Why the change?

It doesn't take much reading between the lines here: the name was proposed specifically to invoke a particular view on the Southern order, in the face of federal intervention to protect the constitutional rights of African-American students.

This is a pretty ugly little historical footnote that undermines the claim that the name is historical or only chosen to celebrate Southern history. Beyond that, many locals consider Forrest particularly unlikable because of the Klan connection and the massacre of blacks at Fort Pillow. Given that:

1) Forrest was not from Jacksonville or Florida and had no particular connection to area
2) The name was only chosen in 1959, when the school opened

...the arguments for a name change look more and more sensible.

[Sgarey123]

Not a chance....just go back and read. Too busy to repeat all that for a new guy.

[Tacachale]

Sorry, not a "new guy". And you never did respond to the argument that the school name was only proposed in 1959, as a swipe at the civil rights movement.

[thelakelander]

Sgarey123's answer to this is posted on page 5.  It was never about race. Only about honoring Forrest'dedication to the Confederacy.  I'm also sure that was what the whole Ax Handle Saturday thing was about a few months later. Those kids should have known better than challenging tradition and our culture by asking to be served at Woolworth's lunch counter.

There's also no trend starting in the 20s that carries through to the naming of Forrest. For example, you've got schools like Terry Parker, Ribault, Paxon, Fletcher, Englewood, Douglas Anderson, etc. sprinkled in there between the 1920s and 1959.

Just to be sure I went and did some homework.  You are dead wrong.  There was a trend. Duval, Jackson, Lee, Kirby Smith (PS25). We have a bunch of schools named for southerners...a good number of Confederates. They are scattered all over the timeline.

I can say this though...our leaders over the years have gone out of their way to provide balance in honoring the culture of everyone.  Black Americans have been given school after school to dedicate. There is no shortage of them. There is plenty of room for Forrest.

Just look at this:  http://www.examiner.com/article/back-to-school-who-they-are-named-after

It does not list all the names but look how many are centric around Black American sub culture?

You have no basis to rename this school. If it does get re-named and it is not named after a confederate then it is racism at work. Period. Again I would love to see it renamed to a Black confederate's name. That would teach the kids that Southern describes them as well.

The only grounds needed to change the name of the school or anything else locally is a majority of the public demanding it. As I said earlier, I truly feel it will eventually change because as time goes on, the city will continue to get more diverse and the community's desires will morph to that of it's demographics. To that effect, it is what it is.

I can definitively state that majority rule has never been the factor in the naming of schools. It has always been about diversity or donation or service.  No one will understand how you can claim diversity if you keep chipping away at only one end of the spectrum. 

It is just wrong.

[carpnter]

We (those of us who prefer a change, not every one agrees) are right that:

1) Forrest was not from Jacksonville or Florida and had no particular connection to area
2) The name was only chosen in 1959, when the school opened.

Those facts are pretty inarguable. Further, a number of us note that:

Forrest opened as a whites-only school, despite the Supreme Court ruling school segregation unconstitutional in Brown vs. the Board of Education 5 years earlier. In fact, a number of other segregated schools were created around this time, and several of the white schools were named for Confederates. Jacksonville didn't have a proliferation of Confederate-named schools before then - all I can name is Lee High, which opened in 1927. Why the change?

It doesn't take much reading between the lines here: the name was proposed specifically to invoke a particular view on the Southern order, in the face of federal intervention to protect the constitutional rights of African-American students.

This is a pretty ugly little historical footnote that undermines the claim that the name is historical or only chosen to celebrate Southern history. Beyond that, many locals consider Forrest particularly unlikable because of the Klan connection and the massacre of blacks at Fort Pillow. Given that:

1) Forrest was not from Jacksonville or Florida and had no particular connection to area
2) The name was only chosen in 1959, when the school opened

...the arguments for a name change look more and more sensible.

Kirby-Smith was built around the time Lee was. 

I think part of the problem with renaming Forrest is that once that one gets renamed, you will see people trying to get other school names changed as well.  You'd probably see fights over Jefferson Davis, Kirby-Smith, J.E.B Stuart, and probably even Lee.
I think it is a good thing that the DCSB stopped naming schools for people a number of years ago. 

[Tacachale]

^Edmund Kirby Smith was also from NE Florida. As for a "slippery slope" to renaming the other schools, there's never been a proposal like that that has gotten any traction. Perhaps that would change, perhaps not; either way it's not a particularly good reason to keep this name.