A school district in San Francisco is planning to rename Abraham Lincoln High School because the iconic president ‘didn’t show that black lives mattered’ to him.
According to the school district renaming committee, Lincoln is one of the historical figures who lived a life stained with oppression, human rights violations, or racism.
Other names removed from schools within the San Francisco United School District include George Washington, Senator Dianne Feinstein, El Dorado, and Herbert Hoover, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Jeremiah Jeffries, the chairman of the renaming committee, said: “Uprooting the problematic names and symbols that currently clutter buildings, streets, throughout the city is a worthy endeavor.
“Only good can come from the public being reflective and intentional about the power of our words, names and rhetoric within our public institutions.”
To many people, Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents, a political mentor to his successors, and the Great Emancipator.
But the renaming committee decided that Lincoln is not worthy of keeping the name as “the majority of his policies proved to be detrimental to (Native Americans).”
“Abraham Lincoln is not seen as much of a hero at all among many American Indian Nations and Native peoples of the United States, as the majority of his policies proved to be detrimental to them,” the committee adds.
Sherry Black, who worked in Native American economic and community development for over 40 years, said: “I have so many reactions in the sense of looking at his entire record and the fact of what (Lincoln) did for Africans and slavery and the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Considering the time period, it’s so difficult to understand how things were at the time. How do you make these decisions?”
Jeffries also said that the narrative of the former president’s legacy is false.
“The history of Lincoln and Native Americans is complicated, not nearly as well known as that of the Civil War and slavery,” he added.
“Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that Black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”
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Replaced!