School Named For Segregationist Renamed For 'Father Of Black History'

FAIRFAX, VA — Fairfax County School Board voted unanimously Thursday night to rename W.T. Woodson High School. Beginning in the 2023-2024 school year, it will be known as Carter G. Woodson High School.

"What I really love about this perfect symmetry is the fact that Carter G. Woodson, not only was he a professor, got his PhD from Harvard, but he also was a school principal," School Board Chair Elaine Tholen (Dranesville) said, before the final vote was taken.

Opened in 1962, the school was named in honor of former Fairfax County Superintendent Wilbert Tucker Woodson. The process for renaming the school located to the east of Fairfax City started after students and community members expressed concerns about the legacy of W.T. Woodson.

After the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation in schools with its decision on Brown V. Board of Education, school officials in Virginia, including W.T. Woodson, opposed integration.

"The order to desegregate schools is highly improper and infringes on human rights," W.T. Woodson wrote in 1959. "To force integration of schools is to force social mixing, since attendance in public schools is usually compulsory. It takes advantage of the immaturity of children in that it tends to use it to force upon both parents and children social adjustments to which so many parents strongly object."

Even though W.T. Woodson eventually supported a plan to gradually integrate Fairfax County schools, that plan was struck down in September 1960 in federal district court, forcing FCPS to integrate. W.T. Woodson announced his retirement a month later, which went into effect in June 1961.

Prompted by the namesake of their high school's opposition to integration, students and community members advocated for the school board for changing the name.

FCPS policy gives the school board the authority to “consider a change in the name of an existing school or facility to ensure an inclusive, respectful learning environment as outlined in our adopted One Fairfax Policy or when the Board deems it appropriate.”

School board members have already exercised their authority to change the name of two high schools named for Confederate officers.

School Board Members Megan McLaughlin (Braddock) and Abrar Omeish (At-Large) oversaw the public engagement process and presented the renaming measure for the board's consideration.

“Through multiple community meetings, public hearings, and online feedback forms, we have engaged in rich discussion and gained a deeper understanding about our shared history," McLaughlin said.

"One of the things that screams the loudest to me in this story is not only that we have to turn the tide and correct what's been wrong, but that complicity is not OK," Abrar said. "[W.T. Woodson] perhaps wasn't Robert E. Lee or J.E.B. Stuart, but he was someone who enabled through his power and inaction, having that power, did the wrongs of our past. That makes us reflect. What are the many ways that we continue to be complicit as a system as individuals in various harms unfolding in our society?"

Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a well-known scholar, author, educator, and journalist, was the son of former enslaved people, according to FCPS. Overcoming childhood hardship, he eventually earned degrees from Harvard University and the University of Chicago. He went on to become the dean of Howard University's College of Arts and Science.

Widely credited as the "Father of Black History," Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the Journal of Negro History (now the Journal of African American History), and “Negro History Week,” the precursor of Black History Month.

"It's meaningful that Carter G Woodson, being considered the Father of Black History, someone who was a contributor to the idea of an African American History Month, that that solution is through education," Abrar said. "I want us to take a moment to also appreciate what that requires. That resources and energies and blood, sweat and tears were spent to not only develop, but then to push forward and try to raise year, after year, after year, the importance of creating these narratives, so that a child in school's first exposure to black people is not enslavement."