D.C. committee recommends school named after Alexander Graham Bell to be renamed
The D.C. Mayor’s office assigned a working group to identify and recommend a removal or renaming of monuments, memorials, schools, or parks which are named after historical figures if the figure had a history of owning slaves or participating in acts of oppression. This group was formed as a part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The committee, named DCFACES, just released their list of recommendations and in it they recommended that the Bell Multicultural High School, which is named after Alexander Graham Bell, to be renamed.
The DCFACES group considered certain questions to lead their decision making, and those questions centered on the public figures’ treatment of African Americans, women, and/or persons of color. For example, if they were slave owners or wrote and/or supported laws that suppressed persons of color and/or women, then they should be disqualified from being honored.
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The Bell Multicultural High School is located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, which is right by the National Zoo (DC Zoo).
It is not clear what “disqualifying” factor was considered when the DCFACES group looked at Alexander Graham Bell to recommend the school be renamed, but two Deaf people on Twitter, Sean Maiwald and Matthew Sampson, pointed out Bell’s history of oppressing signing deaf people and his work with eugenics (trying to prevent deaf people from marrying each other and having deaf children).
So, this is something that’s notable for the signing deaf community today — to see that a D.C. committee has recommended a school named after Bell to be renamed.
How will the process work? The DC Public Schools must make a recommendation to the D.C. Mayor and get an approval from the D.C. Council. That’s something to look for.
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