An article from American Web Media claims that a San Francisco school district is removing Abraham Lincoln’s name from a high school because “black lives did not matter to him.” American Web Media is a website with a history of misrepresenting news and publishing articles that are now outdated.
This piece is no different: The AWM article provides quotes from a San Francisco debate over school names in December 2020. The San Francisco school board voted to remove Lincoln’s name from the high school, along with the names of more than 40 other historical figures, in January 2021. The justification for doing so is what AWM states: Jeremiah Jeffries, chairman of the school board’s renaming committee, said that “Lincoln, like the presidents before him and most after, did not show through policy or rhetoric that black lives ever mattered to them outside of human capital and as casualties of wealth building.”
But in April of the same year, the school board voted to suspend the plan. Abraham Lincoln High School still bears the name of the former president. The AWM article was published on April 14, 2022, more than a full year after the school board rescinded its decision to remove Lincon’s name. The AWM claim that Lincon’s “name will be removed from the school in the months to come” is false.
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