Virgina school drops Confederate name in favor of Black NASA hero Katherine Johnson

After summer of reckoning on race in America, middle school in Virginia changes name to honour Black history

School in Virginia has changed their name to celebrate the contributions of a Black woman mathematician Katherine Johnson. (ABC News)

A school in Virginia has formally swapped its namesake from a Confederate soldier to a Black woman who was a NASA mathematician.

On Friday, a Fairfax middle school, formerly known as Sidney Lanier Middle School, changed its name to Katherine Johnson Middle School.

Officials were prompted to change the name following a conversation about the veneration of Civil war figures in the South during the summer of last year, set against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, as Sidney Lanier was a poet who also served on the Confederate side of the war.

School management were united as the board decided to change the name in November. No one voted to oppose the move.

After the ceremony marking the name change, her niece Valerie Johnson spoke about her aunt’s legacy and how she had discovered more about her and life, according to ABC News.

“Even as a child, I did not really understand the magnitude of her work,” she said. “But as I became an adult I learned about her great and important work at NASA and the fact that she really had superpowers, they were passion, perseverance, and courage.” Other members of Katherine Johnson’s family were in attendance.

Katherine Johnson was born in 1918 and died in 2020, aged 101. Her tenure at NASA lasted over 30 years from 1962 to 1983. Before taking up her position at the Langley Research Centre, she attended West Virginia State College and was a math teacher in the Virginia town of Hampton.

Famously, she was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson in the 2016 Academy Award nominated film Hidden Figures. In 2015, President Barack Obama gave Valerie Johnson the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her life’s work.

Ms Johnson spoke to the Washington Post about how she did not understand why people found her presence in the industry so pioneering for both women and Black people to this day.

“There’s nothing to it – I was just doing my job,” she said to the newspaper in 2017. “They needed information and I had it, and it didn’t matter that I found it. At the time, it was just a question and an answer.”

The school and Ms Johnson have another connection aside from coming from the same state. Ms Johnson worked on Apollo 11’s Eagle mission and the school’s sports team use that name, according a press release

“So, I think it appropriate that the name Katherine Johnson for our middle school will inspire new generations of ‘Eagles’ for our community, and I look forward to watching them fly,” the statement read.

The school’s name change coincides with a debate at the state level of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue the state’s capitol city Richmond which will be heard by the Virginia Supreme Court on 8 June, according to the AP.

Eleven days after the death of George Floyd, Governor Ralph Northam said it would be removed but it has yet to be taken down. This is largely because of the two lawsuits awaiting to be heard, where one put forward by William Gregory outline that the state has the duty to “faithfully guard” and “affectionally protect” the statue.

The case presented by Helen Marie Taylor and four plaintiffs cites a joint resolution from 1889 of the Virginia General Assembly that agreed to keep the monument. They argue that ordering its removal does not fit within his authority as a governor.