(Reuters) – A public school in Atlanta, Georgia which carried the name of a Confederate general will be renamed after Hank Aaron, honoring the legendary baseball player who battled racism in the process of breaking the record for most home runs in a career, the New York Times reported https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/hank-aaron-high-school-atlanta.html.
The Atlanta Board of Education unanimously voted on Monday to approve removing the name of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest from Forrest Hill Academy and renaming it the Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy, accord to the NYT report.
“Names do matter,” Jason F. Esteves, Atlanta’s school board chairman, said at the meeting, according to the NYT report. School board members said Forrest’s legacy was at odds with the community and its values.
The renaming of the school, which will take effect this year, comes as monuments, memorials and public spaces with links to slavery and racism have come under scrutiny, especially after killing of George Floyd last year while in police custody in Minneapolis.
(Reporting by Aakriti Bhalla in Bengaluru; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
