The only public high school in Alexandria, Virginia, could have a new name depending on how the city’s school board votes Monday.
T.C. Williams High School is named after Thomas Chambliss Williams, a former superintendent for the Alexandria City Public Schools system from the mid-1930s until 1963.
According to an information page on the school system’s website, Williams resisted desegregation and argued that Black and white students learned differently and should remain in separate schools.
ACPS started the Identity Project to look at school names, particularly those of T.C. Williams and Matthew Maury Elementary School — which is named after a Confederate naval officer and astronomer.
Maury’s statue was removed from Richmond’s Monument Avenue in July.
Alexandria NAACP president Christopher Harris, a T.C. Williams alumnus, told a meeting of the Identity Project on renaming schools that, “I think we have enough educated people in the city to find a way to maintain the great history of the school…even as we transition to possibly a different name.”
Votes on whether to change T.C. and Maury’s names will take place at 5 p.m. Monday, signaling the final step in a process that started this summer.
