Jimmy Carter stood for healing – then why do Loudoun activists seek to divide on school names?

Jimmy Carter, our 39^th president, died Dec. 30 at age 100 and had a wonderful state funeral in D.C. Jan. 9.  

I turned 18 in 1976 and voted for him.  My first vote ever. I also voted for his re-election in 1980 over Ronald Reagan.  (I only started voting Republican regularly after the 2000 election).  

Carter was not one of our most successful presidents, but was among the best human beings in the Oval Office, and much of what we respect is what he did after leaving the White House – such as Habitat for Humanity. 

On Facebook,  Loudoun Board Chair Phyllis Randall wrote:  “President Carter’s life was one of service and sacrifice. Even those who didn’t agree with his political decisions readily admit that he was a good man, of high character, and a kind heart.”

In another Facebook Post, Pastor Michele Thomas called Carter a “healer.”  

I could not agree with them more, despite our political differences with both of them.

One such example of Carter being a “healer” came in 1978, when he signed a Senate resolution that restored U.S. citizenship posthumously for Confederacy President Jefferson Davis – yes, the same Jefferson Davis whose name has been removed from Route 1 in Arlington and Alexandria and a host of buildings in Virginia and other states.  

In signing that resolution, Carter said:   “Our Nation needs to clear away the guilts and enmities and recriminations of the past, to finally set at rest the divisions that threatened to destroy our Nation and to discredit the principles on which it was founded. Our people need to turn their attention to the important tasks that still lie before us in establishing those principles for all people.”  Read more here: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/…/restoration…

In later years, Carter spoke out against displaying the Confederate Flag, but on monuments and buildings named for confederates, he said in 2017: “ I can understand African-Americans’ aversion to them, and I sympathize with them. But I don‘t have any objection to them being labeled with explanatory labels or that sort of thing.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5007223/Jimmy-Carter-conflicted-Confederate-statues.html

It’s obvious this “Son of the old South,” who led Georgia out of the segregation/Jim Crow era as governor in the early 1970s, but probably benefited from “institutional racism”  that benefited whites like him, did not feel monuments should be torn down, nor buildings renamed.

But today, in Loudoun County and other communities, there has been a concerted campaign by aggressive activists to wipe away the memory of any person for whom a school, building or road is named if they were associated with slavery, the Confederacy or racism.      

Case in point —  the Loudoun School Board is on a trajectory to rename  Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School in Leesburg, a former Times Mirror education reporter, merely because she was an official with the Daughters of the Confederacy, and Mercer Middle School in Aldie, which a School Board consultant implies was named for Loudoun County congressmember and War of 1812 general Charles Fenton Mercer.  His “crime” was owning slaves and supporting their repatriation to Africa, but he led a remarkable life, according to the Dec. 10 letter from Tim Rush https://www.loudounnow.com/opinion/letter-tim-rush-leesburg/article_e8bc0ff6-b65c-11ef-975d-67cc738e3e69.html    

In reality, the Middle School is named for the old Mercer Magisterial District, which itself was named for Gen. Mercer.  Yet, a politically appointed citizens advisory group – of which Thomas is a member — just last month voted to rename the school to Gum Springs Middle School.

Forget the idea of naming something for someone Asian, Latino, LGBTQ or from one of our many religious faiths.

What’s lost in all this is that the renaming of roads and schools, or tearing down of monuments, really doesn’t move the ball one bit for African Americans living today, and just creates division and angst in the community.  

If President Carter could resurrect Jefferson Davis, a true traitor to his country, why is it that the Loudoun decision-makers who control the names of buildings, schools and roads cannot look at the TOTALITY of the lives of the people for whom they are currently named and  “turn their attention to the important tasks that still lie before us,” as our 39^thpresident said.  God rest his soul.

Ken Reid has been a journalist and editor for more than 45 years and served on the Leesburg Town Council (2006 to 2011, and again in 2017), and on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors (2012-2015).