MIDDLETOWN, Conn. (AP) - A Connecticut city council will vote in August to name Middletown’s new middle school after a family of abolitionists and leaders of the state’s free Black communities or after former President Woodrow Wilson.
During a public hearing, proponents of naming the school after the Beman family asked the Middletown Common Council to consider the importance of honoring the family’s legacy instead of honoring Wilson’s racist beliefs and policies.
While in office, Wilson resegregated federal offices, defended the Klu Klux Klan, and referred to Blacks as an “ignorant and inferior race,” the Hartford Courant reported.
Following the national protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd, Wilson’s name was removed from buildings at Princeton, where he served as university president.
“I am definitely in support of a name change to Beman Middle School,” board of education Chair Deborah Cain said Monday. “I remembered as a youth attending Woodrow Wilson Middle School and learning exactly who he was and what he stood for. I was devastated. How can a district, a city tolerate a building named after someone with such racist views?”
Jehiel Beman and his family moved to Middletown in 1830. He became a pastor at the Cross Street AME Zion church, and he fought to abolish slavery with his brother.
The board of education unanimously approved naming the school after the Beman family in October and submitted the recommendation for city approval.
Some alumni of the former Woodrow Wilson Middle School, a different school than the new one facing a vote later this summer, have called for the board not to judge Wilson by contemporary standards of racism.
Republican Town Committee Chair Bill Wilson started an online petition, which has collected nearly 1,700 signatures, to name the school after Wilson. Bill Wilson suggested Monday that the naming should go to a referendum.
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