Friend,

In the 1860s, Robert Mills Lusher served as a Confederate tax collector and then as Louisiana’s superintendent of education following the Civil War. The Reconstruction-era educator wrote in his journal that the chief goal of education was to “vindicate the honor and supremacy of the Caucasian race.”

In the last decade of his life, Lusher edited his Louisiana Journal of Education, where he called for “manual training” for Black students and the removal of rights from Black citizens. He filled the pages of his unfinished memoir by reminiscing over a lifetime of advocacy for white supremacy.

Simply put, Lusher did not believe in educating Black people. But today, a K-12 public school in New Orleans – one with a majority Black student population – bears his name.

“What a slap in the face,” said Phylicia Richardson, a Black woman whose daughter attends high school at Lusher Charter School.

“New Orleans is a predominantly Black city, and Lusher’s mission was just horrible,” said Richardson, who is the school’s PTA president.

Richardson, who is also an administrative assistant for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Children’s Rights Practice Group, is involved in efforts with other parents, students and alumni to change the school’s name to one that does not honor the Confederacy.

In a recent update of its index of Confederate iconography displayed in public spaces across the country, the SPLC identified an additional 100 schools named for Confederate leaders, bringing the total to 304. The majority of those schools are in the South.

Of the schools identified, 85 have been closed or renamed, thanks to the growing movement to remove Confederate statues and other symbols across the country. An additional 21 schools have committed to changing their names but have not yet done so.

The name of Lusher Charter School is the subject of intense debate, and the local school system is now in the process of renaming the building that houses the elementary school, upon which Lusher’s full name is prominently featured. But because the charter school is operated by a private entity, the Orleans Parish School Board says it doesn’t have the authority to rename the school itself.

Parents like Richardson disagree.

It pains Richardson that in 2021, the school’s name still honors someone who used his position to promote white supremacy and deny educational equity to Black people.

“Why would we want our children to go to this school, given Lusher’s mission?” Richardson, 33, asked. “Lusher didn’t want me here, and he wouldn’t want my daughter here. Why do we have to hold on to his name? This is not a small issue; this is an issue we have to deal with now and not drag our feet.”

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center