TACOMA, Wash. — Tacoma is one step closer to changing the name of Woodrow Wilson High School – after several alumni sent letters to the principal pointing out the former president’s racist ties.
The superintendent says naming the school after local trailblazer Dolores Silas is the best option.
Last week, Superintendent Carla Santorno formally recommended to the Tacoma School Board that Wilson High School should instead bear the name of Silas, a local education and racial equity trailblazer.
Silas was the first Black woman to serve on Tacoma City Council and the first Black woman to serve as an administrator for Tacoma Public Schools.
”She's just a person that represents homegrown Tacoma, leadership and just the kind of image that we want to promote in the community,” said Andrea Cobb, president of the Tacoma School Board.
The school board will now have to approve the recommendation, officially stripping Woodrow Wilson’s name from the school.
"If we're going to engage in anti-racist practices and really do the work. We need to do it,” said Bernadette Ray, principal of Wilson High School.
Last spring, Ray heard from several alumni who were not supportive of the school’s current name.
Wilson was the 28th president of the United States and served from 1913 to 1921. He was also a segregationist and an open advocate of the Ku Klux Klan.
”Our goal is certainly not to erase those many accomplishments by changing the name of the school, but rather to recognize that there are students and folks in our community who are not comfortable with the name being Woodrow Wilson High School,” Ray said.
Ray formed a community committee to come up with some options, which included renaming the school after Ruby Bridges, a U.S. civil rights activist who was the first African-American child to desegregate an all-white Louisiana elementary school in 1960. Another option was to keep the Wilson name but remove all associations with Woodrow Wilson.
"I think that there was just overwhelming sense that, where we can make a change and undo some of the legacy of segregation and racism that our community just wants to,” Cobb said.
In a statement on the district's website, Santorno said "keeping the Wilson name would not have made enough of an important statement—with all that’s going on in our country—about the importance of divorcing ourselves from Woodrow Wilson’s racist advocacy.”
Ray says some people are opposed to the name change, fearing it’ll wipe out the school’s history. She says that’s not the case, but she acknowledged a new name will take some getting used to.
Ray says the name change could cost at least $400,000 for building signage, sports team uniforms and other costs.
The school's mascot, the Rams, and the school's colors will not change.
If the school board approves this, the name change would take effect July 1.
