New School, Thy Name is Howard

By Julie Hubbard, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.

Nov. 16–Bibb County’s newest public school finally has a name — Howard High School.

The Bibb County school board approved the name in an 8-0 vote Thursday night at its regular meeting.

The $27.7 million high school is under construction on Forsyth Road near the Monroe County line and will open next August.

For the past year, school officials had referred to the high school by different names, either High School No. 4, Northwest High, and occasionally Howard High. It sits next to Howard Middle.

But as the high school grew closer to opening there was an urgency to get the school named; and a principal is slated to be hired there next month.

“It was pretty much the only name we discussed,” said board member Gary Bechtel, who represents the district and was on the naming committee. “It’s better to go with a name after a community, it gives people a connection.”

The school was named for the Howard community, a congressional voting district in north Bibb.

In recent years, school names, such as Rutland Middle and High and Bloomfield Middle, have come to bear the names of their communities, but that wasn’t always the case.

Before desegregation, schools were largely named for both prominent black and white school leaders.

For instance, Hunt Elementary, which is now merged with Burdell on Fort Hill Street, is partly named for Henry A. Hunt, who died in 1957.

Hunt was the former principal of the Normal and Industrial High School, which is now Fort Valley State University.

Morgan Elementary school was named for W.T. Morgan — a pharmacist and banker who served 48 years on the school board.

In the early 1970s along with a desegregation lawsuit, there was a movement to stop that practice and create newly integrated schools and give them names such as Central, Northeast and Southwest, geographic locations to avoid any racial tension, according to Telegraph archives.

That has been a sore spot in Macon ever since.

Ed Defore, current city councilman and a former school board member, wanted to rename those high schools back to their historical leader names in the 1980s, but the attempt was short lived, he said.

At the time, the board would have had to spend a lot of money to change the school’s names and voted against it. Plus, students were protesting the possibility.

“I think history should not be forgotten,” Defore said. He said many schools that bore the names of great leaders have now closed, such as Pearl Stephens and Eugenia Hamilton, and their names and milestones may slowly be forgotten.

With the exception of Westside High, which opened about a decade ago, there has been another movement now to get away from geographic location school naming, Bechtel said.

“Over the last 20 years, we tried to get away from directional names,” he said.

Naming schools generically, like Skyview, given the name for its location sitting high up on a vista, or Heritage, a patriotic homage after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was the trend which followed, Bechtel said.

Three newer schools, though, were given exceptions and named for leaders, but it is not the norm, he said.

Hutchings Career Center was named for an exceptional leader and former school board member, William S. Hutchings, who worked to improve race relations. The board felt he earned the recognition, he said.

Carter Elementary was named for former NASA space shuttle astronaut Sonny Carter, who was born in Macon and brought great recognition, Bechtel said. Ballard-Hudson Middle, which will open in January, was also named for two great leaders and was a former all-black school in that community, he said.

Now the trend is to stay away from naming schools after people, he said.

“We’re building schools out in the suburbs and trying to have more of a connection with the areas where we build,” he said. “When you start naming them after individuals you have a tendency to make yourself popular with one group of individuals and not others.”

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To contact writer Julie Hubbard, call 744-4331.

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