Voting begins today on whether to rename Lee High School or not, and what a day DCPS chose to begin on, April 26, Confederate Memorial Day.
Confederate Memorial Day. is a state-sanctioned holiday in Florida. You may be reading those lines and be thinking, what? Well hold on, it gets worse. The birthdays of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee are also legal holidays in Florida.
Why would the State of Florida set aside days to celebrate and honor traitors? And make no mistake, Lee and all Confederates were traitors, regardless of how various white supremacist want to be historical societies, have tried very hard to show otherwise.
“The Confederacy, the American Civil War, was fought, and it was an act of rebellion,” he said. “It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution. Those officers turned their back on their oath.”
~Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley when he called for taking “ ‘a hard look’ at changing the names of Army bases honoring Confederate officers who had fought against the Union during the Civil War.”
But again, why would the State of Florida do this? They did it for the same reason the City of Jacksonville named several schools, including Lee, after Confederate Generals. They did it for the same reason they built monuments to traitors. They did it for the same reason they burned crosses on the lawns of Black people. They did it for the same reason they lynched young Black men. They did it to honor “their” heroes of the Lost Cause, and to continue their heritage of hate against People of Color.
But Robert E. Lee was one of the good ones! No! He was not. None of them were good men, not in the end, and most were not “good men” at the beginning, either.
Lee was a Confederate General who owned slaves and took up arms against the United States of America to keep those slaves.
Lee was not even a citizen of the United States of America at the time the City of Jacksonville decided to honor him by naming their newest “whites only” high school after him. After the War, Lee told a congressional committee that blacks were “not disposed to work” and did not possess the intellectual capacity to vote and participate in politics, but it was he, who lost his right to vote. As is the case with traitors, he was stripped of his citizenship. Lee did apply to have his citizenship restored, on October 2,1865. That request would not be granted in his lifetime. He died, a man without a country.
It was not until 1975 that Congress posthumously restored Lee’s citizenship
Who can vote:
Students
Duval Schools faculty and staff
School Advisory Council
Parent Teacher Association or Parent Teacher Student Association members
Community members within the school’s attendance zone, and former attendance zone for current Magnet schools
Alumni of the school, regardless of graduation status
And here’s the kicker; DCPS will give a ballot for each criteria that is met! That means an alumni who is also in the PTA, and a community member will be allowed to vote 3 times!
Whatever happened to one person one vote?
This voting “gimmick” that DCPS has inserted into the vote gives an unfair advantage to older alumni members, who have been very vocal, and very nastily opposed to any name change.
DCPS took a wrong turn back in 1927, hopefully this unethical, ill conceived procedure that gives old racists 3 votes to current students 1 vote will be a lost cause and justice and equality will prevail.
If you are in the community please vote to change the name.
Voting runs; April 26 to April 30, between 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. and May 3 to May 7, between 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.at the school.
The names
Avondale High School
Legacy High School
Riverside High School
School #33
Robert E. Lee High School
Lee High School Community area
