I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina in a school system that was desegregated only one year before I was born.  My older sister by 7 years was in the first high school graduating class to go K - 12 in a desegregated system.  Next door to my elementary school, Sherwood Bates Elementary, sat Josephus Daniels Middle School.  I didn't go there, but it loomed large across the field and was made into a highly desirable magnet school.  

Just recently, an incident in North Carolina history which had long been misrepresented as a black race riot came back into focus:  In 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina white supremacists organized the Wilmington Massacre, a violent overthrow of a duly elected government of both black and white officials who believed in integration.  Organized white mobs forced out elected officials at gunpoint, and burned and looted the homes, property and businesses of African American citizens as they attempted to build lives and communities after the end of slavery.  At least 60 African American people died that day. 

The massacre was the result of an uprising of white terrorirsts, incited to action by Josephus Daniels, the owner of the Raleigh Newspaper "The News and Observer," and an anti-black propaganda campaign using the newspaper to encourage white terrorism against blacks, violent voter suppression and election fraud in concert Charles B. Aycock and others.  

In 2019 the paper he founded ran an article detailing his role in this horrific and shameful stain on North Carolina history.  Josephus Daniels is not a name that should be honored on a school building--and no student should receive a publicly-funded education under the banner and glorification of white supremacy.  By now we know better and can do better.  

As our nation reaches this tipping point in our history with race, we cannot allow the ghosts of white supremacy continue to be celebrated, and have the truth buried in misplaced nostalgia and denial.  Remove Daniels' name from Daniels Middle School, and end the practice of glorifying racism and violence against African Americans.