Nearly two dozen people spoke in favor of renaming Richmond’s George Mason Elementary School after local politician and civil rights champion Henry L. Marsh III at a public hearing Monday in the school’s auditorium.
The Richmond School Board began the renaming process for Mason and three other schools in September. At the time, Richmond schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said Mason’s history of slave ownership should disqualify him from having a school named after him.
School Board members hope to make a decision on names for all four schools next month.
At Monday’s public hearing, Henry Marsh’s daughter spoke in favor of honoring her father, now 86, and said the name would inspire those who attend to become leaders like him. Nadine Marsh-Carter, a former Richmond School Board member, said the civil rights lawyer’s connection to Mason runs deep, given that he grew up a few blocks away and attended the school.
In 1977, as a member of the Richmond City Council, Marsh became Richmond’s first African American mayor. He served in the state Senate from 1992 to 2014.
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Others also spoke highly of Marsh, including Ben Ragsdale, who said he has known Marsh for nearly 50 years and that his record is deserving of the honor.
“We talk a lot about Founding Fathers here in Richmond. Henry Marsh and his peers were the founding fathers and mothers of the new Richmond, the new Virginia and the new United States,” Ragsdale said.
Other nominations for the East End school’s new name include Barbara Johns Elementary — in honor of the woman who in 1951 led a student protest in Farmville that helped led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision — and Church Hill Elementary.
School Board Vice Chairwoman Cheryl Burke, whose 7th District includes Mason, said she appreciates the public feedback because it is her job to advocate for the most popular choice from her constituents.
She said the feedback from the public hearings and online feedback forms will be taken into consideration and that the board will make a collective decision.
Critics of the decision to rename the school point to Mason’s record of developing the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which served as a basis for the U.S. Bill of Rights. But Mason also owned roughly 100 slaves during his lifetime, according to the website of his 18th-century estate Gunston Hall.
The renaming coincides with the construction of a new Mason school building, which is set to open for the start of the 2020-21 school year. The city’s Commission of Architectural Review recently ruled that Richmond Public Schools could not completely demolish the old structure; the school system is proposing to use brick from the old building to build an archway on campus, rather than make parts of the old building integral to the new structure.
George Mason is one of four schools in the city getting a new name, in addition to E.S.H. Greene Elementary, Amelia Street School and a new middle school on Hull Street Road that is replacing the current Elkhardt-Thompson Middle.
The second community hearing on the renaming of the Amelia Street School is scheduled for Feb. 3. Board members said they expect to make final decisions on all of the schools by the second regular meeting in February.
