In November, the Board of Regents for the Georgia University System rejected it’s own advisory committee’s recommendation that it change the name of 71 buildings and four colleges that are named after 58 individuals who were either slaveholders or champions of racism. The Regents claimed their decision was because “History can teach us important lessons,” but never explained what lessons were being taught by honoring racists. The interim President of the University of South Carolina also refused to abide by the recommendation of a University committee and change the names of eleven buildings named after racists.
In Georgia, the buildings include an administrative office, Cobb House, at the University of Georgia’s main campus in Athens, and the Talmadge Residence Hall at Middle Georgia State University in Macon, part of the Augusta University medical center, and the Talmadge Auditorium at the University of Georgia. In South Carolina, the advisory committee recommended changing the name of fitness center named for Strom Thurmond, a former U.S. Senator and South Carolina governor who championed racial segregation segregation for much of his life. The committee also recommended removing the names of Confederate generals, slaveholders, and other segregationists and replacing them with the names of noted local African Americans.
According to the University of Georgia advisory committee report, Thomas Cobb (1823-1862) “used his law prowess to support the enslavement of African Americans. In An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America (1858), he presented a legal justification of race slavery as both necessary and benevolent. To convince lawyers outside of the slaveholding south of the inherent goodness of the system, Cobb cited historical precedence, property rights, and morality to emphasize the necessity for the enslavement of African Americans. Cobb insisted that his ‘inquiry into the physical, mental, and moral development of the negro race’ showed them “as peculiarly fitted for a laborious class’ He further argued that African Americans were uniquely “capable of great and long-continued exertion…. incapable of successful self-development, and adapt[ed] …for the direction of the wiser race.’” Cobb claimed that the enslaved African’s “moral character renders them happy, peaceful, contented and cheerful in a status that would break the spirit and destroy the energies of the Caucasian or the native American.” (46).
Herman Talmadge (1913-2002) was a U.S. Senator (1957-81), Georgia Governor (1948-55), and an avowed segregationist. According to the advisory committee report, Talmadge used “his elected position to promote and enforce racial segregation in the state and in the university system . . . Talmadge positioned himself as Georgia’s most avowed defender of segregation” and “admitted to attending Klan functions (banquets and other public affairs) and the Klan honored him at his funeral . . . [t]he FBI concluded that he may have sanctioned the lynching of a black man in order to attract votes in a tight election near the end of his career.” Talmadge was also anti-Semitic. “[H]e praised Hitler’s Mein Kampf and stated that he read many times. His admiration for Adolf Hitler partially explains his opposition to the US involvement in World War II.”
In Montgomery, Alabama, the city faces a $25,000 fine for changing the name of Jeff Davis Avenue, a street named for Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to Fred D Gray Avenue. Gray was the lawyer who represented Rosa Parks during the Montgomery bus boycott when Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger. Montgomery is violating Alabama’s 2017 Memorial Preservation Act that forbids the removal or alteration of Confederate monuments, memorials, or street and building names. Other Alabama cities have opted to pay the fine so they can remove offending Confederate statues. The Alabama State House in Montgomery still has a statue of Jefferson Davis, a statue of James Marion Sims, a gynecologist who experimented on enslaved African women without antiseptics or anesthetics, and a statue celebrating Confederate war veterans. Alabama still celebrates the birthdays of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis as official state holidays with government offices, courthouses, and state buildings closed on the first Monday in June.
There is a nationwide movement to reconsider the names of places and teams and to stop honoring racists and racist symbols. The Cleveland Indians are now known as the Cleveland Guardians. The Washington Redskins are now the Washington Football Team while a new name is being considered. A bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a slave trader, a Confederate general responsible for atrocities committed against African American troops serving in the United States army, and a founder of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan, was finally removed from the State Capitol Building in Nashville, Tennessee. Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced the Reconciliation in Place Names Act to create a special advisory committee to investigate and propose changes to offensive place names There remain over 1,000 towns, lakes, streams, creeks and mountains in the United States with racist name.
Princeton University removed President Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public-policy school because he advocated racial segregation. Clemson University removed former U.S. Senator and Vice-President John C. Calhoun’s name from its honors college because Calhoun, a slave holder, championed slavery in the United States. Yale University has also removed Calhoun’s name from one of its colleges.
In New York City, Mayor-elect Eric Adams, has pledged to rename streets and buildings named after slave-owners. The name of a Bronx Park was recently changed from Mullaly to Foster. John Mullaly was indicted during the Civil War for inciting a draft riot that led to the murder of African Americans on the streets of Manhattan. The Reverend Wendell Foster was a Bronx community activist who campaigned to have the park restored.
1625 is the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island and it is long past time to remove the name of the last Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, from places of honor. Stuyvesant was Director-General of New Netherland from 1647 to 1664 and was the largest private owner of enslaved Africans; he claimed ownership of forty men and women. In 1660, after a shipment of enslaved Africans landed in New Amsterdam, Stuyvesant supervised what was probably the colony’s first public auction of human beings. Stuyvesant was also a rabid anti-Semite who wanted Jews banned from the Dutch colony.
In Manhattan, there is a Stuyvesant Square at 16th Street and 2nd Avenue with a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, a Stuyvesant High School, and a Stuyvesant Town residential development. In Brooklyn there is a neighborhood known as Bedford-Stuyvesant and a Stuyvesant Avenue.
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