Civil Rights Icon May Replace Woodrow Wilson At Framingham School

FRAMINGHAM, MA — The Framingham School Committee in May will rename Woodrow Wilson Elementary School following outcry over the 28th U.S. president's racist views, and the new name has been whittled down to two choices.

The renaming process began in September when the School Committee voted to pursue the name change. Since then, officials have held meetings and discussions with students and members of the community to come up with a suitable replacement.

Over the last few months, Framingham students worked to research and suggest possible new names. In April, students across the district voted on their top two favorites out of the five final names.

The top two choices: Harmony Grove and Ruby Bridges.

Harmony Grove was a park in Framingham located where Farm Pond Park is today. Harmony Grove in the 19th century was the site of several rallies against slavery and in favor of women's suffrage.

Bridges, who is still alive today, became a civil rights figure in 1960 when she desegregated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana. Once inside the school, only one teacher — who was from Boston — agreed to teach her.

The other three top choices were Peter Salem, a Framingham slave who was later freed and fought in the Revolutionary War; the slavery abolitionist Sojourner Truth; and Emiliano Mundrucu, a Brazilian who was one of the first Black people to challenge Jim Crow laws.

The school got its name in the 1920s, according to school officials, when Wilson was popular for his intervention in World War I and pursuit of the League of Nations. But he supported segregation in the federal government, and wrote in support of the Ku Klux Klan and denying Black citizens the right to vote.

Wilson also had an infamous confrontation with Boston civil rights activist William Monroe Trotter. In 1914, Trotter and a group of activists tried to meet with Wilson at the White House about segregation, but Wilson responded by kicking them out.

The Framingham School Committee will hold a public hearing on the new name choices on May 5, and the committee is scheduled to take a vote on May 19.