Lachlan Wallace is a senior at Newark Academy, a Maplewood resident, and a Tuscan Elementary School graduate. Village Green is publishing Wallace’s opinion contribution here as part of our student journalism program supported by the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
In her graduation essay at Columbia High School in 1912, Delia Bolden posed the question, “But is he free to be a man – an American? Emphatically no.”
As the first Black woman to graduate from Columbia High School, Bolden was highlighting the inequality Black Americans still faced decades after slavery had ended.
Delia Bolden
Over a hundred years later, on June 29, 2022, the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education voted to rename Jefferson Elementary School as Delia Bolden Elementary School. The decision resulted from a process that included students in choosing which names and achievements to associate with the school. As America marks 250 years since Jefferson helped write that “all men are created equal,” the renaming raises questions about how we should remember him today.
I think the district made the right decision. We can celebrate Delia Bolden and recognize Jefferson’s moral shortcomings without overlooking his important role in American history.
Jefferson was wrong to enslave people, and many recognized slavery as unjust even during his lifetime. The harder question is how those actions should shape his legacy. He promoted equality while denying freedom to the people he enslaved, and criticized slavery while continuing to benefit from it. Jefferson lived in a Virginia society where slavery was deeply established, but that doesn’t excuse his decision to continue benefiting from it. At the same time, letting slavery define his entire legacy would overlook his contributions as a Founding Father, particularly his role in drafting the Declaration of Independence. We should acknowledge his hypocrisy without disregarding his influence.
Jefferson’s significant place in history does not mean we should keep honoring him by naming our schools after him. A school name does more than recognize a person’s place in history; it shows the values a community wants to stand for. During the renaming process, students considered attributes like perseverance, acceptance, diversity, and respect. The students weren’t deciding whether Jefferson deserved to be remembered, but whose achievements and values should represent their school.
Delia Bolden was a fitting choice. Apart from being Columbia High School’s first Black woman to graduate, her 1912 essay dealt directly with the unequal treatment of Black Americans, especially the denial of the right to vote and the rights attached to citizenship. More than a century after Jefferson helped write that all men were created equal, Bolden was still questioning whether Black Americans were being treated as equal citizens.
Lachlan Wallace
Changing a school’s name shows our values, but how we teach and remember history matters just as much. Students at Delia Bolden Elementary School should learn about the woman their school honors, as well as Jefferson’s role in founding the nation and the contradictions between his beliefs and his actions. Acknowledging Jefferson’s achievements doesn’t justify his moral failures, and criticizing his actions doesn’t mean we should disregard the value of his contributions to American history. While changing a school’s name can’t alter the past, it can shape how future generations understand it.
