A group of students and others advocating to change the name of Wheeler High School in East Cobb will take part in a panel discussion on the Confederate Symbols movement sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The forum, entitled “Public Art and the Politics of Remembering Georgia’s Confederate Past,” will take place next Thursday, Dec. 16, starting at 7 p.m.
The event, whose sponsors include the City of Atlanta and local artist Lisa Tuttle, is free and open to the public and you can RSVP by clicking here.
Starting Monday, members of the public can submit questions in advance at the registration link. The SPLC said a complete agenda will be announced before the forum.
The Wheeler Name Change Group organized in 2020, following the death of Georgie Floyd that sparked nationwide protests about racial and social justice.
Wheeler, which opened in 1965, is named after Confederate Civil War general Joseph Wheeler, who later was readmitted to the U.S. Army and served in Congress. He’s one of a handful of Confederate veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery and has a statue in his honor at Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
An online petition was started to push for the Wheeler name change, and received several thousand signatures, including Democratic Cobb Board of Education member Charisse Davis, whose Post 6 includes the Wheeler cluster.
The name change group said that their research has shown that the Cobb school board purposely named the high school located on Holt Road after Wheeler, who wasn’t from the area, in defiance of integration.
Wheeler is the only school in the Cobb County School District named after a Confederate figure. Name-change advocates said it’s not a fitting name for one of the most diverse schools in the district.
They have held online town hall meetings and spoken during public comment periods at Cobb school board meetings, but the board has not formally considered the name change proposal.
Group members have complained that a board policy limiting how agenda items may be added has prevented that from happening, and that their e-mails to board members have gone largely unanswered.
In late 2020 the board’s Republican majority voted to dissolve a newly formed committee to consider school name changes, prompting cries from board Democrats that it was an act of “systemic racism.”
On Thursday the Cobb school board voted along party lines to recommend new elected boundaries that would take the Walton and Wheeler clusters out of Post 6 and place them into Post 5, represented by Republican David Banks.
The SPLC forum topics next Thursday include “Correcting history is not the same as erasing it,” data on Confederate symbols remaining in public spaces in Georgia and legislation aimed at helping the state “break up” with the Confederacy.
Other panelists include the following:
- Lisa Tuttle, artist, Postcolonial Karma exhibition at Gallery 72
- Kevin Sipp, City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs
- State Rep. Billy Mitchell (D-Stone Mountain)
- Kimberly Probolus, SPLC Intelligence Project Fellow/Researcher
- Lecia Brooks, SPLC Chief of Staff
Previous ECN coverage of the Wheeler name change effort can be found here.
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“Correcting history is not the same as erasing it,” You have to love it when the SPLiban tells you they are going to make it all better. Don’t give these people an inch!