What's in a Name?
- linnieaikensartist
- Feb 23
- 9 min read
There are times in everyone's life when you are forced to take a stand, even if you're not the "fightin' type." This post is decidedly controversial, I am warning you up front, but I challenge you to read to the end to get the whole picture of what I'm trying to convey. One of those times in my life was when in the early 2020's, there was a movement to change the name of my high school. Well, that's innocuous enough, you say, but it represented a much, much larger issue.
In 2021 during the “Black Lives Matter” movement, the younger generation of people of the U.S., I’d say primarily those 30-35 on down, felt it essential to tear down statues of any Confederate General and denude all buildings of names that honored founders of our country who had been slave owners over a hundred years ago— a movement, while at its core, is inarguably worthy in that it sought to right the wrongs done by America towards those with roots subjugated in slavery. However, to an older generation, it seemed that using a wider brush, this movement also served to basically whitewash the history of the United States by "sweeping it all under the rug," so that future generations wouldn't be reminded of the horrors done to others during this shameful time in our country's history.
My high school was one of these buildings—JOHN MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL in Los Angeles, CA, also inarguably, the most iconic high school building in the western United States. It sits in the narrow valley between the Silverlake and Los Feliz Hills, with Hollywood on the third side and Griffith Park, then Glendale on the fourth. Not only did my Grandma Aikens, nee Lott, graduate in the first class in the early 1930’s, but both of my parents, all of my aunts and uncles on both sides, and my sisters I call Marshall High our alma mater.
With its beautiful Collegiate Gothic brick architecture, designed by George M. Lindsey in 1930, it is the most filmed high school in America for movies. The original “Grease” was filmed there while I attended, and one of my sisters and friends were stand-ins at the carnival scene. Pretty in Pink, Never Been Kissed, Gross Point Blank, Nightmare on Elm Street, Space Jam, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a whole range of other T.V. series, movies and music videos were set there over the past 50 years. Attendees included noteworthy TV and movie actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and a huge list of others actors, producers, musicians, Olympic and professional athletes, CNN anchors, famous judges and politicians, Nobel Prize winners, as well as the infamous Heidi Fleiss, “Madam Hollywood,” and the “Black Dahlia”. In the past 20 years, it has achieved national recognition several times for its Academic Decathlon performance. Then and now, it is a school that inspires overwhelming school spirit and pride in its attendees.
John Marshall, the man, was one of the first Supreme Court Justices of our nation, living in a time in history before the Civil War. He served as a Chief Justice for 34 years, the longest in history in that position, and he was cited as the one who made our the Supreme Court a co-equal branch in the tricommunal leadership of our country, in essence, solidifying the American judiciary's role in the checks and balances system in our nation's government. He is best known for establishing the power of judicial review, and he established the Supreme Court's authority to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional, formalizing the doctrine of judicial review. He is cited as being the instrumental judge to transform the Court into a more cohesive, powerful, and respected institution.
In light of this, our mascot was a barrister—Yes, a lawyer to my amusement, yet an acknowledgement that I always took pride in as well. It had always felt good to me to be represented by intelligence rather than a ferocious animal. I am sure there are those who would equate lawyers with ferocious animals, and perhaps I did too when I emerged from my divorce scarred and clawed nearly to death, but in my unjaded mind, I was pleased. Graduates of JMHS are attached to the name of their high school.
All that said, in the end, it isn't the name change in itself, but rather the movement that bothers me. And let me be clear, enslavement of ANYONE is wrong. I don't think there is a soul in this world with even a speck of love for humanity that would dispute this. Please bear with me as I try and explain.
Yes, we knew then that he’d owned slaves, and particularly in the 1970’s when I attended, but we had learned our history and understood history to be a guide and necessary admonition for the future so we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past. For nearly 250 years, from 1619 until the 13th Amendment after the Civil War in 1865, most anyone of any historical significance in the building of our nation owned slaves, because that was the culture at the time. Many were born into it. Yes, slavery then and now is abominable, we likely all agree on that point, and even back then, many then knew slavery was wrong, but many didn’t. That is why we had a Civil War, to change the thinking and behavior of a nation, correcting this horrible behavior and abolishing slavery. When we consider the presidents, George Washington and ten of the first 12 presidents of our country owned slaves, but in the course of their lives, they learned, evolved with knowledge, and changed, just like we do in life. When I was young, we put it into perspective and learned that being educated in history was critical to learning from our past and avoiding the same mistakes. If history has taught us anything, it’s that it has a way of repeating itself if we don’t learn from it in order to change and grow.
But the enslavement of others still isn’t abolished, is it? Now we call it trafficking, where the victims are women and children. Even when I was in high school, "sweatshops" enslaving those of Asian descent and children filled downtown Los Angeles. During Westward Expansion of the USA, we stole the land and subjugated the Native Americans. In WWII, we enslaved the Japanese, born of our fear. Despite the Holocaust, there are may in our country who still sling slurs at the Jews. Our country verbally and violently harassed and killed homosexuals for many years. We ridicule the overweight publicly with "fat people jokes" and treat them as lazy and inferior, persecuting them mercilessly and turning them down for jobs. We send old people to homes and forget them because they are too inconvenient in our busy lives, many of those homes treating them harshly and disrespectfully—often inhumanely. The elderly re-entering the workplace out of necessity are treated with open disregard and criticism, despite a lifetime of significant contribution to society. Now our government targets nearly every race that isn't "white." Treating ANYONE with disrespect in any manner devalues the preciousness of humanity and in essence, enslaves them. We have in effect, enslaved all of these peoples and still do.
So, under the current premise spouted that any good doesn't cancel out the bad, in 2021 young (Los) Angelinos took a stand to erase more negative history by removing John Marshall’s name and replacing it with Thurgood Marshall’s name (a worthy man to be sure), an African American Civil rights lawyer of the 1980’s-90’s. Similar steps were taken all across the country despite pleas of older people to instead keep the historical statues and names as a reminder and warning to not repeat the bad parts of our country’s history. If we were to abolish every past slave owner’s name from schools and buildings, we’d have to logically remove the names of 10-12 early presidents of the United States, emblazoned on thousands of schools, cities, towns, streets, etc. in this nation, including the “father of our country,” George Washington.
Whenever I think about this issue, my thoughts drift back to a film I saw as a 5th grader at Micheltorena Street School in 1971. It featured Bill Cosby sitting on a stool in blackness, a spotlight on him. Nothing else. He spends about a half hour portraying the ultimate bigot, casting aspersions on a multitude of races based on generally believed stereotypes and ignorance...and fear. In the end, you're left with the feeling that if extrapolated to the nth degree, we should toss out every single race, every color, every age, every religion, every gender in humanity, thus emphasizing the absurdity as a whole. Shame on us! Shame on all of us. While he doesn't directly speak of slavery, it's the devaluation of human life which he illustrates that underlies every attempt to subjugate others. No matter what you think of Cosby, a black man, considering his own despicable sins in life, his message is still relevant. (And it shows that every person, of every race and color has made both huge mistakes and positive contributions to society, even you and me. ALL humans are fallible. But they CAN, and often DO, learn and grow.
The link below is to this short film of which I refer.
Certainly, without question, Thurgood Marshall was a worthy man, also a civil rights lawyer of the 1980’s-90’s and associate Supreme Court Justice, the first African-American to hold such a title. There should be a school and/or monuments honoring him, truly—to not only memorialize him and his efforts towards equality of all men, but also as evidence that our country IS continually evolving and IS trying to correct its mistakes, not hiding them by obliterating them from our memories. But even Thurgood Marshall made some societal, some consider moral mistakes....as we all do as humans.
If we extrapolate further, what’s to keep future generations from tearing down statues and changing the now new names of buildings of those who drove fossil-fuel automobiles for their contribution toward destroying the ozone layer of our planet during a critical time when the earth is dying from our lack of stewardship, or those who contributed to stealing from the Native Americans, harassing homosexuals, trafficking by either running or participating even indirectly in the sweatshops, prostitution, internment labor camps, domestic violence, etc., for examples? Or what about all of the men we’ve honored who subjugated the women in their lives, including several recent presidents? Would removing their statues correct the situation? When does the white washing stop and individuals have the courage to learn about the past of the country, facing its mistakes, so that they can avoid similar mistakes in the future? Are we then, to rid our lives of all teachable moments as well?
Human beings are fallible. But we CAN change! I don't believe it can happen by hiding it all under the rug, but by taking steps to highlight those mistakes and turning them into teachable moments. It starts with, instead of throwing out the study of history as unimportant, rewrite the tomes of history more truthfully, recognizing the incredible contributions of individuals and also the harms done our country as fallible human beings, which WE ALL ARE, then EDUCATING our young to learn from the mistakes of the past so we remember that we all walk that road between good and evil and have the a choice in making a positive mark or a negative mark on the future of our world, as we all have the propensity for both should we fall asleep and not pay attention to this.
On an economic note: Incidentally, during this time, the name of my own school where I was teaching, was named George Washington Academy, and the conviction plagued me... Wouldn't the billions of dollars necessary to effect the stripping of names, renaming and rebranding across the country be better spent on educating our students and teaching them the value of learning history so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past?
Instead of tearing things down, renaming, brushing the ugliness under the carpet, perhaps we use them as teachable moments for the generations to follow—1) Create new plaques that acknowledge both their contributions and the terrible mistakes of history that we might never forget and learn from them so as not to repeat them in the future. 2) Include in our history books and educational system the same instead of the current short-sighted trend of doing away with the teaching of history all together.
Spoken over 2000 years ago and forever true: "He who is without sin, cast the first stone."
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Note: All artwork, stories and observations posted within should be credited to the author, Linnie Aikens Lindsay (unless cited in the post). Permission is required for any use of my words or artwork. Taken from my work, "My Life As Wallpaper Art".
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