The Dallas Independent School District is taking confederacy name changes to a new level by adding founding fathers to the list.
Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson are among 20 names listed in a Facebook post by a Dallas ISD trustee upset with the proposal. James Bowie, Sam Houston and William B. Travis also are being considered.
Houston ISD already spent over $1 million on Confederate name changes, but there's no word yet if the district will follow suit.
“If we took votes and the public actually wanted it and were willing to pay for it, then I'm all for it. But we shouldn't be forced into name changes that we're not okay with and be forced to pay the bill afterward,” says HISD parent Adrienne Murry.
Murry calls the trend a slippery slope of no return.
“We're talking about cities named after Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin,” she says. “We're also talking about hospitals such as Hermann Hospital.”
Now Texas House Speaker Joe Straus wants a plaque from the Children of the Confederacy removed from the state capitol. On his Facebook page, Straus said, “The plaque says that the Civil War was not an act of rebellion and was not primarily about slavery. This is not accurate, and Texans are not well-served by incorrect information about our history.”
“You can't just say this person was a Confederate and therefore they are a bad person,” says Murry.
“John H. Reagan is a good example. He worked for the Confederacy, he had a job but he wasn't actually a Confederate soldier,” she says. “He was a major person who spoke out about the abolition of slavery, and he's not the only one.”