Richmond Public School Board members listened to arguments supporting and opposing a recent proposal to rename the East End high school to Armstrong-Kennedy High School during public comment at a school board meeting on Monday night. The proposal also includes a change to Armstrong’s current colors, from orange and blue to blue and gold, and its current mascot from the wildcat to the jaguar. 

The request comes from alumni of John F. Kennedy High School, the school that originally occupied where its rival stands on Cool Lane. The price for the change could cost anywhere from $75,000 to $100,000, Superintendent Jason Kamras said.

Dennis Mallory, chairman of the John F. Kennedy High School Alumni and Friends Scholarship Committee, said the association would make a contribution towards the change and provide regular donations to the scholarship fund for the school if the board approves the request.

Currently only a marker on the side of the building, provided by Kennedy alumni, recognizes the site’s history, as they say the memories of their school have been erased. At last month’s meeting, former Armstrong principal and current director of high school principals Willie J. Bell Jr. said there is a space inside the school commemorating Kennedy, but there have been talks to create a mini-museum inside, too.

But what’s currently in place is not enough for the members of the alumni association. 

“What I still don’t like is that our name is no longer on the building where we were birthed,” said Trina Davis, a 1995 graduate of Kennedy. “Erasing us means we no longer exist or you just don’t care.” 

Charles Willis, a 1978 graduate of the school, expressed disappointment at the elimination of the school.

“If you came to Richmond you wouldn't even know that a John F. Kennedy High School existed,” Willis said, advocating for the name change. 

Mariah White, a former school board member who briefly attended Kennedy, supported the name change as well. 

“Half of you are not from Richmond Public Schools and you would not know the legacies that [laid] there,” she said. “I would advise this board to agree to accept what the Armstrong and Kennedy legend stands for because it was legacy.”

Kirk Jones, a graduate of the Armstrong High School class of 1977, opposed the proposal. 

“The name Armstrong High School has a reputation of respect known far and wide,” Jones told the board. “Armstrong is an invaluable asset to the city and no name change should be considered.”

Robin Dickerson, a teacher at Armstrong High School, said that when she was a student at John Marshall High School, her school stood in solidarity of not having the two schools merge back in 1979.

“The community would like for Armstrong to exist in the community as Armstrong High School," she said. "No name change.”

The room was torn, as audience members either shook or nodded their heads as speakers relayed their stances. 

School Board members were also unclear of what the association exactly wanted. The proposal was initially presented at last month’s meeting by Bell, but it did not include the color or mascot change. It’s also not the first time that alumni asked for the name change, as they approached the board in 2020 for the same thing. 

Cheryl Burke (7th District), who oversees the district that the school is in, said that just changing the name might not mean that the history is going to be told. 

At one point, Board Chair Shavonda Fernandez (9th District) asked alumni if the proposal was about the history or the name during a presentation about the request.

Mallory, chair of the alumni committee, said it’s about both. 

“It’s about the history, it’s about the legacy, it’s about the community,” he responded. 

Emmett Jafari (8th District), who joined the meeting virtually, suggested that the decision for what the organization wants to do needs to be consistent and said he believes that the board is not yet ready to make a decision. 

Jafari, who said he attended Maggie Walker when it was a school for Black students, empathized with the Kennedy students who feel they’ve lost a part of their heritage.

“I think what we’re losing in this whole site is what the school meant to the community and what was taken out of it when all of a sudden it wasn’t there anymore,” he said. “It’s almost like saying that people just stopped existing, and I think that’s the real painful part.”

A tale of two East End Schools

John F. Kennedy High School opened just a mile away from the old Armstrong High School building in September 1968 because Armstrong was overcrowded, Burke said. They were the Kougars and the colors were scarlet red and gold.  

Both schools merged in 1979 to become the Armstrong-Kennedy High School complex – with both buildings and students still in place. They changed the colors to blue and gold, and made the mascot the jaguar. The complex was later eliminated in 1985, allowing both schools to have their original colors and mascots in their respective buildings. 

Richmond School Board members in March 2004 finally made the decision to merge the two schools again due to enrollment declining and the Armstrong building deteriorating, this time only retaining the Armstrong name, colors and mascot at the building belonging to the Kennedy school on Cool Lane. People spoke out that year after the decision asking if the then-board could make the school's name, colors and mascots how it used to be in 1979. The board voted two months later, 5-4, to keep it as Armstrong. 

But alumni admit that comparing Kennedy to Armstrong is like “comparing David to Goliath,” as Armstrong High School’s history dates back to 1865. 

The school was mainly known as the Colored High and Normal School, before being renamed in 1909 after Samuel C. Armstrong, an American Civil War soldier and educator who led Black soldiers and mainly taught Black and Native American children at what would later become Hampton University. 

Paula Williams was a 1984 graduate of the merged Armstrong-Kennedy school who spoke out in a February 2004 school board meeting to keep the school as Armstrong-Kennedy. She also spoke at last night’s meeting with the same message. 

“Instead of erasing the history of either building, how about merging and rising up the history of both?” she asked board members. “My class, 20 years ago, fought for the merger of Armstrong and Kennedy so that no history would be erased.”

School board members recounted the decision the school board made back in 2004 to remove Kennedy’s name off the Armstrong building. Shonda Harris-Muhammed (6th District) said she was a math teacher at the school and remembers how devastated students were. 

This time around, “I just want us to remember the children,” she admonished her colleagues. 

Burke, who was a principal at Chimborazo, also remembered how terrible it was for the students. 

“I know the next day, when you all walked into Kennedy, trophies and things were in the trash can,” she said.

She emphasized that she doesn’t want what happened to the Kennedy students to happen to the current Armstrong students. She also noted that people have been “beefing” on social media about the proposal, saying that it was setting a bad example for the students. 

The school board ultimately decided to defer the vote on the proposal to the October meeting, as Katie Ricard (2nd District), Vice Chair Matthew Percival (1st District) and Ali Faruk (3rd District) suggested hearing from the community and the students about the proposal. 

Contact Reporter Victoria A. Ifatusin at vifatusin@richmonder.org