A black school board member is campaigning to rename a school that bears the name of a Confederate general who became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
General Forrest Middle School is named for Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Roberta Watts, one of two blacks on the city’s seven-member school board, describes Forrest as a slave-owning, uneducated Klan leader.
The school has about 500 students, 35 percent of whom are black.
“Public education is not a choice. Those children and their parents are required to attend that school,” Watts said. “I’ve brought it up before in a board work session. They said, `No, we can’t even think about that.’ “
Fred Taylor, the longtime school superintendent, said the board has never been asked to change the name. Even if it had, Taylor said, the board won’t change the name just because of the Klan, which Forrest left in 1869 because it had become too violent.
