A San Fransisco school district has recently decided to update a school named after late president Abraham Lincoln. This decision is not alone, however, as there is forty-four total presidents and other political figures having their names removed from San Fransisco public schools. A third-grade teacher and chairman of the renaming committee, Jeremiah Jeffries, suggested these changes due to racist political pasts.
Abraham Lincoln has been regarded as an “Anti Racist” political head for quite a long time, but this just isn’t accurate. Though he is known for his emancipation of slavery, he enacted other policies that proved harmful to Native Americans. In 1862 he passed acts that allowed white people to take Native land; and in 1864 he relocated the Narajo tribe 450 miles by foot, from ancestral land in current day Arizona to current day New Mexico.
As the country grows from its past, we are learning that our heroes weren’t always perfect. It is our duty to learn from this, as opposed to idolizing them for who we thought they were.
