We are lifelong members of the Wildcat Nation and as parents, alumni, teachers, and students in this community, we believe it is well past time for the Cobb County School Board to rename Joseph Wheeler High School, an institution whose very name celebrates, memorializes, and honors a confederate general and subsequently the Confederacy.

We are working on a formal request to change the name of Joseph E. Wheeler High School. The current display of confederate and segregationist names and themes on government buildings only serves to fuel legitimacy among 21st century white supremacists to the Confederacy and the values it endorsed.  The values of the school’s namesake do not reflect the values of its students, faculty, or community.

The students that walk the hallowed halls on 375 Holt Rd. are a diverse group and are deserving of a name that represents who they are as a community.

 It does not go unnoticed that the school was named after the passing of Brown v Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. It does not go unnoticed that the school was named after the state of Georgia finally began to adhere to the ruling, seven years after it passed. It does not go unnoticed that the Cobb County School Board finally voted to desegregate in 1965 -- one year after the school was named

Cobb County is well behind the times in recognizing this error. There are many worthy Georgians whose name the school could hold. Joseph E. Wheeler isn’t one of them.