The public elementary school I attended, William Paca Elementary School (in Abingdon, MD), was named after a wealthy white slave owner. Regardless of William Paca's historical significance to Harford County, it's wrong to celebrate the namesake of a man complicit in one of the ugliest injustices of American history. What message does it send to young black children when some of the most formative years of their education are spent in an institution named after a man who held their ancestors as property?

This is why I'm starting this petition to the Harford County Board of Education to rename the school after a prominent black activist from Harford County: Alvin Dwight Pettit, a lawyer who was the first black student to attend Aberdeen High School after a 1958 civil rights case against Harford County Public Schools. While this gesture may be insignificant in the face of current events, I still believe that it's important to send a message of racial justice to the children of Abingdon and Edgewood rather than celebrate a slave owner.

If you have ties in Harford County and believe in justice and equality for black Americans, please sign this petition so that an important part of our community is no longer named after a man involved in the one of the worst atrocities carried out in this country.