“Time to Consider Changing the Name of Woodrow Wilson High School”?

Photo by PoPville flickr user Phil

From an email:

“Time to Consider Changing the Name of Woodrow Wilson High School:
Forum and Community Conversation on President Wilson’s Impact on D.C.
February 12, 2019, 7:00-9:00 p.m.

The D.C. History and Justice Collective and the Wilson High School Diversity Task Force invite Wilson students, teachers, staff, alumni and neighbors, and residents of all eight wards to join a forum and community conversation on President Woodrow Wilson’s segregationist legacy in Washington. Is it time to change the school’s name?

President Wilson brought Jim Crow practices to the federal government, firing and demoting black employees who had found a road to advancement in the federal civil service. His racist employment practices decimated the black middle class in Washington in the early 20th century and fired up the segregation in housing and education that has kept many in the black community separate and unequal to this day.

“‘The colored people of Washington have never recovered from the blow that struck them in the time of Woodrow Wilson,’ concluded a national report on segregation in Washington in 1948.” (Eric Yellin, Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America).

Moderator Ray Suarez, prominent broadcast journalist and father of a Wilson High School graduate, will guide discussion between community members and the following experts:
Clarence Alston, Social Studies teacher, Woodrow Wilson High School
Alcione Amos, Curator, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
Michele Bollinger, D.C. History teacher, Woodrow Wilson High School
John Milton Cooper, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, and member of the Woodrow Wilson High School class of 1957
James Fisher, descendant of the last residents of the African-American village on Broad Branch Rd.
Neil Flanagan, architect and author of the City Paper 2017 story, “The Battle of Fort Reno”
Eric Yellin, Professor of History and American Studies, University of Richmond, and author of Racism in the Nation’s Service: Government Workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America.

The discussion will take place at Woodrow Wilson High School, 3950 Chesapeake Street, N.W. on Tuesday, February 12, 7:00-9:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Register here.”