“We cannot move forward without confronting the infrastructures that were built as a statement of white supremacy,” Blair, 28, told the school board.
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The four women – Marché Johnson, Khadidah Stone, Kayla Vinson and Amerika Blair – had spent almost two months preparing for the Montgomery, Alabama, school board meeting, and when the day finally arrived, they were ready.
They had only one purpose that evening: Convince the school board to remove the names of Confederate leaders from three schools in a state whose license plates still bear the phrase, “Heart of Dixie.”
For decades, multiple efforts had been made to rename the schools, to no avail. But in the July meeting, Blair and Vinson spoke eloquently about why they believed the names celebrated white supremacy.
Robert E. Lee High School is named after the general who led the Confederate Army, Jefferson Davis High School is named after the president of the Confederacy, and Sidney Lanier High School bears the name of a private in the Confederate Army.
“We cannot move forward without confronting the infrastructures that were built as a statement of white supremacy,” Blair, 28, told the school board. “We cannot move forward by memorializing a history of Black inferiority... MPS (Montgomery Public Schools), I’m calling on you to stand against the legacy of white supremacy... and to change the name of Lee high.”
Some audience members applauded Blair’s bravery, but others remained silent.
After about three hours of debate and deliberation, the women got what they wanted: The board voted to rename the schools.
But the decision wasn’t unanimous or without controversy. Board member Dr. Lesa Keith voted against each measure.
After the public comment section ended, Keith – who had taught psychology to Blair at Lee High School – said, “History is not here for us to like it or dislike it. It is here for us to learn from it. And I heard you and most of you are offended by it. … But it’s a good thing to be offended. Because that means that we will never repeat it. And if we keep on like this, you’re going to have someone out there, some crazy person … it can be white, it can be Black and can be some other race, but something stupid is gonna happen. And whatever race it happens to be, we’re all gonna be blamed for it. … It’s not your history, it’s all of our history.”
Blair quickly stood up, demanding to know why Keith hadn’t taught her the truth about Lee when she was in Keith’s classroom.
Then, Keith shouted, “All lives matter!”
In response, several people in the audience yelled, “Black lives matter” – invoking the movement against racial injustice and police brutality – and left the meeting. Blair was among them.
“I wasn’t taught my history,” Blair later told the Southern Poverty Law Center. “I never knew who Gen. Lee was. If all lives matter, then make sure you don’t control the narrative to where you are memorializing people who did not believe in the humanity of Black people. It’s insulting.”
Vinson said that Keith’s words – and the words of other citizens who didn’t agree with renaming the schools – were difficult to hear. Rather than speaking of “erasing history,” she said the women’s duty as leaders of the movement was to face history.
“While we claim to be a democracy with equal justice for all, we haven’t been,” Vinson, 31, said. “Facing our history means facing the fact that we haven’t treated everyone with equity.”
During the meeting, as concerned citizens gathered to voice their opinions over renaming the schools, there was tension in the air. The silence ended when school board member, Jannah Bailey, began the meeting with a call to prayer. Evoking the words of former First Lady Michelle Obama, she said, “[H]istory has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.”
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