Madison High School to disconnect itself from 'racist' namesake

Posted November 2020

By Garon Jones

Staff Editor

Two Portland Public schools, Kellogg Middle School and Madison High School, have petitioned to change their names.

At Kellogg, students have fiercely petitioned for a name change, while at Madison, the principal has announced that the building’s leadership has initiated the process to change its namesake.

A Bridger Elementary fifth-grader named Ruby Waas Shull, not even from Kellogg, has petitioned for its name to be changed, garnering over 4,900 signatures online as of this writing. Her goal is to reach 5,000.

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg's been my hero and idol,” Wass Shull said. “So, it was really important to me to represent her.”

At Madison, Principal Adam Skyles has announced in a statement that the school will begin to abandon its ties with James Madison, the well known father of the Constitution.

“At Madison, our values are community, respect, education, equity and diversity,” Skyles wrote in a note to families. “Our school’s namesake, President James Madison, was racist and was someone whose beliefs and actions stand in direct conflict with our school’s and our district’s commitment to racial equity.”

James Madison remains an important figure in American history due to his enormous role in shaping our founding documents. He famously wrote a number of entries, along with Alexander Hamilton, entitled the Federalist Papers, arguing and defending the ratification of the Constitution we still have today. As president, he presided during the War of 1812 and signed other important key legislation that shaped our nation’s early history. But Madison was also a known slaveholder, owning over 100 black Americans during his lifetime.

“There’s no reason why the name of one of the most diverse schools in the state needs to be that of a man who owned 120 slaves,” Madison student Jaya Probesco Mitchell said at the time.

The name changes come at a time when the debate over honoring controversial figures remains fierce. Across the country, statues of historical figures, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, have been torn down. Both Washington and Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves as well. However, opponents of this cultural and historical cleansing argue that our founding fathers are celebrated not for their participation in the horrors of American slavery, but for their enormous accomplishments and influences beyond the institution. These founding figures, many argue, participated in a revolution that not only gave birth to democracy in a single nation, but inspired countless nations around the globe to cast aside the old monarchies of the past.

As for the future of both schools, Madison and Kellog are currently under construction, and are scheduled to reopen next fall. A 2018 policy adopted by the school board makes the renaming process long and extensive, requiring several community meetings. It could even stall the process up to five years. In response, during a mid-July board meeting, Senior Adviser for Racial Equity and Social Justice Dani Ledezma voiced a new policy that could shorten the name change to only one or two years.