8-6-18
Georgia women’s college quietly drops class names tied to Klan history
Breaking Newstags: Georgia, KKK, Wesleyan College
For more than a century, Wesleyan College for women has clung to class names cast from an era when the school openly celebrated the Ku Klux Klan and fostered initiation ceremonies that used nooses, Klan-like robes and rituals held by torchlight in the dead of night.
Many of these traditions continued for decades after the 1960s when the first African-American students entered the Macon school, which proudly touts its storied place as the oldest chartered college for women in America. Methodist ministers founded the school in 1838.
Now, as the school readies for fall classes that start next Monday, one of the last vestiges of its racist past has suddenly vanished. School officials on July 24 announced they are abolishing Wesleyan’s use of its four class names over concerns they link directly back to the most menacing parts of the institution’s history.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Orban's American Apologists
- After Winning as An Activist Preacher, Can Warnock Win Again as an Effective Pragmatist?
- Youngkin's Neoconfederate Nominee to State Historical Board Resigns
- Commission Recommends Change to Massachusetts State Seal, Motto
- History's Greatest Barrier to Climate Action—the Senate—May Have Fallen
- Alex Keyssar on the Need to Reform the Electoral Count Act
- Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner David McCulloch Dies at 89
- How Toxic is Masculinity, and Whose Job Is it to Fix It?
- Barbara Smith on Reproductive Freedom Organizing
- Katherine Stewart Joins Jane Coaston to Discuss the Rise of Christian Nationalism