I agree with Anderson, and I’d add that we have no shortage of San Diegans who are far more worthy of being honored than Jackson or some other questionable figures. And, clearly, if there is anyone who deserves to have their monument taken down, it’s him.” “There are lots and lots of books about Andrew Jackson no one is going to forget who he is,” Anderson said. Supreme Court, a man best known for the Dred Scott decision declaring that African Americans were not citizens and had no legal standing to file suits. He also forcibly removed more than 15,000 Cherokee at gunpoint, and as Whites looted their homes, he sent them on a march hundreds of miles west - a trip that resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 Cherokee.Īnd on top of that he also is responsible for putting Roger Taney on the U.S. He drove the Muscogee from their land in Georgia - a journey that claimed 3,500 lives. Jackson, who led bloody campaigns against Natives during his military career, made moving Native peoples one of the top priorities during his presidency, and in doing so caused the deaths of thousands from starvation, exposure and illness. He accurately noted that Jackson owned more than a hundred slaves and was one of the biggest proponents of forcibly removing Native Americans from their lands. He said he recognizes that Jackson did some positive things for the country - especially related to banks - but the question remains, at what cost? It is not erasing history it is erasing propaganda,” Anderson said. and in Europe take stock of who they memorialize with monuments, and he was hoping San Diego would do the same thing. Anderson, the San Diego man who started the petition last summer to remove Andrew Jackson’s name from Rolando’s post office, said he did it because it “seems like the right thing to do.” In the wake of George Floyd being killed by police, he saw other places in the U.S. Similar to the debate about removing certain monuments, some folks will try and make changing names about “removing or erasing history” or about “cancel culture run amok.”Įrik B. That person was decent, and our community is better because they were a part of it.”īut for some reason or other, people like to overcomplicate that. That person embodied certain values we want to uplift and promote. It’s typically people we look at and say, “That person served our community. The whole reason we name things after people is fundamentally to honor them. Just like I’m sure there are some who take exception to efforts to rid Rolando’s post office of Andrew Jackson. It’s fantastic that San Diego Unified opted to revisit these naming issues, but at the same time I know there are some folks out there grumbling a bit about the Serra name change. Back in 1945, some 1,900 Pacific Beach residents petitioned for William Payne to be removed because they didn’t think a Black teacher was needed. George Walker Smith, a community leader who was the first African American elected to office in San Diego as a school board member, and they agreed to change the name of a joint community park at Pacific Beach Middle School from “Pacific Beach Joint-Use Field” to “Fannie and William Payne Joint-Use Field” in honor of two public school teachers - one of whom was the first Black teacher at Pacific Beach Middle. They voted to name a future City Heights campus after the late Rev. On Tuesday the board also agreed to two more name changes. “We shouldn’t be cheering for conquistadors when there’s nothing to be celebrated.” “The mascot and Serra himself are tied to the oppression of Native peoples, and we shouldn’t be glorifying a mascot like the conquistador with all the violence,” said Charlotte Taila, a Canyon Hills High junior who started a petition last summer to change the mascot. The students also rightfully argued it was racist to have a conquistador as a mascot because it represents the Spanish colonization of the Americas, a campaign that succeeded only by carrying out a genocide of indigenous peoples. Students argued that having a school named after Serra is offensive to indigenous peoples, whose ancestors were forced to adopt Catholicism and Spanish culture while working for free and often being beaten under the mission system. San Diego Unified’s Junipero Serra High School, named after the founder of California’s mission system, will now be called Canyon Hills High School because students successfully petitioned and persuaded the San Diego Unified School District board to change the name as well as the school’s mascot, which was a conquistador. On Tuesday, the U-T’s Kristen Taketa shared a fascinating story about some name changes coming to San Diego.
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