James Madison Memorial High School
A committee has recommended renaming James Madison Memorial High School the Vel Phillips Memorial High School. The Madison school board still needs to vote on the recommendation.
I read a bizarre letter to the editor in the Cap Times regarding the renaming of James Madison Memorial High School. “[James] Madison, like Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe,'' it began, “did not choose to be slave owners. They were born into and inherited a situation not of their making.”
“They did the best they could,” continued the letter, “considering the situation they were in and the time they lived.”
Slave owner apologism seems to have found its way to the pages of our otherwise graceful, “source of progressive opinion” local newspaper. And while opposing opinions deserve to be published, this letter to the editor would have maybe been more befitting of say, 1865. To wax poetic on the benevolence of slaveholder presidents seems a bit out of date for 2021, foolish even.
The author of the letter to the editor went to great pains to justify the ownership of human beings: “Jefferson, Madison and Monroe allowed their slaves more freedom than most other slaves. They were allowed to come and go and earn outside incomes beyond serving on the plantation. They were not overworked for food, housing and their health care. They were also educated to read and write, technically illegal, and some of them could choose skilled apprenticeships for a career.”
Ah yes, these were the lucky Black slaves! When whipped for not picking enough cotton, these slaves could access healthcare!
I struggle to agree with the judgment call made to publish this letter. Unfiltered white supremacy should not be given the attention it desperately seeks in order to normalize its sin. This letter was not an opinion piece; it was plantation propaganda. It is rooted in falsehoods; Jefferson raped, tortured and mistreated the human beings he kept as property on his plantation. The others were also terrible.
No benevolence there.
But perhaps the point the Cap Times made in defense of their publishing this letter — that this letter holds a belief that needs to be confronted — is worth considering.
What does it say about the debate over the renaming of Memorial High if our community cannot unanimously reject slaveholding as bad?
What does it say if our community values maintaining the legacy of historical figures more than correcting our immoral, racist history for our neighbors here and now?
James Madison wasn’t just any imperfect person, he was a man who owned other human beings, a man who deployed the cruelty of white supremacy for a profit. I don’t know how else to say it: Slavery was terrible enough to warrant renaming James Madison Memorial High School.
A reexamination of history is the least that can be done to right the wrongs of our forefathers. Those who thought up the revolutionary democracy of our Constitution had the fortitude to determine that ownership of Black people was wrong. They, after all, knew they themselves deserved freedom and self-determination.
Slaveholding was a choice, not an inevitable predestination. To be made to justify where on the moral scale slaveholders lie is to be gaslit by white supremacists.
Thankfully, this week the committee formed to rename James Madison Memorial voted 10-1 to recommend the school be named Vel Phillips Memorial — a move that would honor the American attorney, politician, jurist, and Civil Rights activist who served as the first female alderperson and judge in Milwaukee and as Wisconsin’s secretary of state. The recommendation will now go to the Madison school board for final debate and approval.
It is a disservice to who we are now to forget the origins of our country. If we moralize that slavery was okay for that particular time, we will normalize that white supremacy is okay for right now.
Nada Elmikashfi is a former candidate for state Senate and chief of staff to state Rep. Francesca Hong.
