Parents, Historians Urge DC’s Mayor Bowser To Initiate Wilson High Name Change

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Woodrow Wilson was the 28th U.S. President, serving two terms starting in 1913.

During that period, according to a number of D.C. historians, Wilson crippled the upward mobility of African Americans who had jobs in the federal government.

Wilson segregated the previously integrated civil service and demoted a number of Black supervisors. The historians accuse Wilson of stunting the growth of the District’s Black community just a half century after the Civil War ended.

Judith Ingram is a co-founder of the D.C. History and Justice Collective, one of the groups pushing to remove Wilson’s name from the school. Ingram is a parent of a current student and another who graduated from Wilson in the recent past.

She said she believes a president who stunted opportunities for Black people in D.C. should not be honored by one of the city’s most diverse high schools.

“All students of that school deserve respect and deserve to feel welcome when they walk in the doors of that school,” Ingram said.

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