Racist or history? Majority Latino and Black Texas high school debates changing its Confederate name

One of her peers balked; her alma mater was actually named for a Confederate general?“The district should see that people are looking at us differently or making judgments about us — and the school we come from or our hometown — from all over the place because of the name,” Rocha said.The Texas high school serves a student body that’s 15.2 percent African American and 72.6 percent Hispanic, in the predominantly minority school district. Yet, its moniker venerates the Confederacy's military leader and slave owner who in life ironically discouraged monuments to the Civil War, including Confederate monuments.Amid the summer’s historic reckoning with more than 1,700 publicly sponsored Confederate symbols across the country, other school boards in Texas have voted to rename high schools that once commemorated Lee. But Baytown’s Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District is lagging behind, despite a legacy of community outcry dating back soon after desegregation.Now, after a groundswell of calls and emails, the school board has scheduled a vote next month on whether to finally eliminate the Confederate reference.“No one’s saying that if we remove that name, that we take away your ability to pick up a book or use Google,” Neil Hernandez, a 2014 graduate, said. You know, I think most of America is dealing with these issues,” Loredo said.Controversy around potential reforms at the high school has incited a bitter battle in Baytown, as some locals fervently disavow the prospect of change.“Most of them haven’t even read our American history,” said Marilyn Lane, a 1973 graduate whose family has attended the school for generations.