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Portsmouth — For the second time in 30 years, Wilson High School in Portsmouth could get a new name.
Portsmouth’s School Board has agreed to review the school’s name after a push by alumni to ditch the name, which honors former President Woodrow Wilson, because of his racist views.
Two other schools, James Hurst and John Tyler elementaries, also could be renamed.
The calls for renaming in Portsmouth began this summer after weeks of nationwide demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism. Schools in Norfolk, Hampton and Newport News — including some named after people who fought for the Confederacy — have also been the targets of renaming requests.
In Portsmouth, most of the pressure — including a Change.org petition and an op-ed published in The Virginian-Pilot — had come from alumni of Manor High, who saw their school renamed for the Virginia native Wilson in the early 1990s.
Board member Costella Williams, who’s leading the committee that ultimately will make the recommendation on whether to change one or all of the names, said Manor alums have told her removing Wilson’s name would right two wrongs.
“A lot of people that graduated from Manor, they talk about it every time you see them,” Williams said. “Manor people felt like they lost a lot of that (pride) when they took their name.”
The building off Elmhurst Lane has been called Wilson since 1993, but before then, the former president’s name had been affixed to another school in the city since 1917.
In the early 1990s, the board voted to consolidate the city’s five high schools into three. As part of the consolidation, the original Wilson High was turned into a middle school and renamed Hunt-Mapp (which closed permanently in 2005).
But Wilson alumni fought to keep the name, school colors and Presidents mascot, and successfully petitioned led the board to rename Manor High, one of the remaining three high schools, after Wilson. Manor High, which opened in 1972, drew its name from the mostly black Cavalier Manor and mostly white Hodges Manor neighborhoods from which students came.
After the decision to rename Manor, hundreds of students protested between classes, according to Pilot articles from the time. Students criticized the board for wasting money, having just spent more than $76,000 on a new gym floor featuring the Manor Mustangs logo.
Now, it’s the Manor alumni who have mounted a fight. More than 3,700 have signed the petition to remove Wilson’s name from the school because of his racist beliefs.
President from 1913-21, Wilson has been remembered mostly for his international diplomacy. But he was also responsible for resegregating federal departments when he took office and opposed the voting rights of Black people, who he said were “an ignorant and inferior race.” His praise for the Ku Klux Klan was quoted in D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” which Wilson screened at the White House over protests.
“Woodrow Wilson was a demonstrated bigot,” the alumni petition reads. “His name should not grace any building that educates African Americans — or any other group of children.”
Wilson’s been the target of renaming campaigns elsewhere, including at Princeton University where he served as the school’s president and where a college and school of public policy had been named in his honor. In June, the university’s trustees announced they would rename both.
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In addition to the requests to rename Wilson High, the Portsmouth board’s also heard complaints about the namesakes of James Hurst and John Tyler elementary schools.
John Tyler Elementary is named after another Virginian and U.S. president. He described slavery as “evil” but was a slaveholder his whole life and supported the westward expansion of slavery. The school was built after portions of Norfolk County not served by existing schools were annexed by Portsmouth in the late 1940s, according to the district’s annual report reviewed for The Pilot by Portsmouth librarian Ben Neal.
Hurst was the school superintendent in Norfolk County from 1920 to 1941 and is credited with modernizing the school system. The legally segregated school system he presided over offered unequal education opportunities for Black students — which Hurst acknowledged was subpar — and Black residents protested when Hurst removed Black principals at three schools and replaced them with white principals, according to a Pilot article from 1941.
The school already bore his name when Portsmouth annexed the part of the county where the school sat in 1960, Neal said.
The committee plans to hold two public hearings in September and October, Williams said. They’ll be in person, and she’s currently finalizing a location where the committee can hear comments while allowing the public to remain socially distanced.
Staff writer Matt Jones contributed to this report.
Sara Gregory, 757-469-7484, sara.gregory@pilotonline.com
This article has been updated to correct the name of John Tyler Elementary on first reference.