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. 

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other African Americans, we are working on a formal request to change the name of Jospeh 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.  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. 

Students do not deserve to attend a school whose namesake celebrates a Confederate history and one that was named for a hateful purpose: to hurt and shame Black youth that were, by court order, integrated into our county’s white school system. 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 -- the same year they named Joseph Wheeler High School.

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