JACKSONVILLE, Fla — More school names are up for debate in Duval County.
Demands for change in race relations across the U.S. have caused the removal of confederate monuments from public places. A Duval County School Board member pushed to add three more names to the mix for different reasons.
On Tuesday, the school board voted to consider renaming three additional schools because of their ties to the killings of Native Americans.
First Coast News spoke with a historian about the influence of the two men in question and why one man calls them controversial.
Jean Ribault High School and Ribault Middle School were named after a French colonist who came to North Florida in the 1500s. A historian says he was here longer than Andrew Jackson, the namesake of the city of Jacksonville.
Ben Frazier of the Northside Coalition agrees with this latest move.
“It’s a good addition to a plan that is designed to help heal this city,” Frazier said, referring to the movement to change six Duval County schools named after Confederate leaders.
Duval County School Board member Ashley Smith-Juarez proposed to rename Andrew Jackson High School, Jean Ribault Middle School and Jean Ribault High School.
In her letter, she says those two men are responsible for marginalizing and killing Indigenous people.
Susan Parker, former director of the St. Augustine Historical Society has spent 35 years studying colonial history and has a Ph.D. in studying the subject.
“In the damage done to Indigenous peoples, Ribault is a very, very small player and had very little influence,” Parker said.
Ribault and the Huguenots, French protestants, sailed to the mouth of the St. Johns River and met up with the Timucuan Indians.
“Jean Ribault was a French explorer and settler in the American Southeast in the 1560s, he came to Jacksonville around 1565 and was there for just about a week, left and never returned,” Parker said.
Parker says the French had little influence compared to the Spanish in regions of Florida.
Parker does not believe that Ribault had great influence in the loss of Timucuan lives.
“Probably what killed most of the Timucuans and, of course, many other of the Indians in North and South America was the European diseases that came with them, to which they had no immunity,” Parker said.
Andrew Jackson was more influential, and not always in a positive way.
“He’s the first territorial governor of Florida and was involved in fighting Native Americans,” Parker added.
Jackson’s efforts in the removal of American Indians include his role in the Trail of Tears, forcing natives to flee their homeland to make way for European colonists settling on the East Coast.
The city of Jacksonville was also named after the nation’s seventh president.
Historians say there is no indication Jackson ever visited the city he was named after.
“Both of these instances are historically correct in that they are linked to the ideology of white supremacy, that (white people) are smarter than people of color,” Frazier said.
The Duval County School Board will continue discussing these possible name changes in the future.
The board voted 6-1 on Tuesday to move forward the consideration of the name changes.