Activism in Florida: Confederate names are being removed from six Jacksonville schools

“Agitate, educate, organize.”

These are the words and three-point strategy that Northside Coalition of Jacksonville founder Benjamin Frazier has outlined for success.

Frazier, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, was instrumental in the recent Duval County School District’s decision to rename all six of its Confederate-named public schools. He also remembers when Confederate Park was segregated. Frazier, who is Black, recalls that, on one side of the park, there were signs posted indicating “colored,” designating where Black people were to sit.

He also remembers similar signs for water fountains and restrooms at Confederate Park, which has been renamed Springfield Park, thanks to his work and that of other local activist groups in the Jacksonville area.

According to Frazier, it took over four years of hard work and public engagement to lay the groundwork for the decision at the June 2021 Duval County School Board meeting to rename schools that bear the names of Confederate soldiers and leaders. Frazier is quoted in The Florida Times-Union saying, “The School Board’s decision to rename six schools in Jacksonville is a giant step forward in righting a racist ideology. We don’t need schools named in honor of slave-holding Generals.”

The Duval County School District voted to change these schools’ names, and the changes are taking place: Robert E. Lee High School to Riverside High School, Joseph Finegan Elementary School to Anchor Academy, Stonewall Jackson Elementary School to Hidden Oaks Elementary School, Jefferson Davis Middle School to Charger Academy, Kirby-Smith Middle School to Springfield Middle School and J.E.B. Stuart Middle School to Westside Middle School.

“It is welcome news that a half dozen schools will no longer pay tribute to Confederate figures,” said Lecia Brooks, SPLC Action Fund chief of staff. “We commend the Duval County School District for listening to the voices of the people and will continue to insist that elected officials throughout the state do the same.

“Of course, this is a story about the power of community exemplified by Benjamin Frazier, the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville and all the other community leaders and activists who are advocating for the removal of hateful Confederate symbols from Florida’s public spaces.”

Persistence is the key to such success, Frazier acknowledged.

“Change takes time,” he said. “Many activists think change happens overnight, and it doesn’t happen like that.”

He described a battle that has taken many years and continues to this day. Frazier credits the rallies, marches and demonstrations his group and others have organized in the Jacksonville area over the years to the removal of certain Confederate symbols and names.

He and his team ran a multifaceted effort.

“We had a direct mail campaign and a canvassing campaign with a team of over 100 volunteers who knocked on over 1,000 doors to educate the community on the need to change the names of schools and remove Confederate monuments and symbols,” he said.

Frazier recalled an event where people marched from Jacksonville to St. Augustine, a 42-mile journey reminiscent of some of the marches held in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s. A former journalist and media producer, he said his media background played an important role in the campaign.

“The media presence in the civil rights campaign is just as important now as it was when Martin Luther King Jr. used the media to gain the attention of the world in the sixties,” he said. “Those practices are still useful today.”

He also reflected on the importance of working with his white allies to make change in the community.

“We all need to work a little closer together so we can march together into the sunlight,” he said.

Donn Scott Jr. is a policy associate with the SPLC Action Fund.

Photo by Edward Kerns II/MediaPunch/IPx