Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is giving the Barringer Academic Center community a chance to vote on a new name for the school, which is named for a family of prominent white supremacists from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Barringer is doing an online poll that offers three options for a new namesake for the west Charlotte elementary school. They are:
- Judy Howard Williams, founder of Charlotte’s Mothers of Murdered Offspring group. She died in October.
- Charles H. Parker, a formerly enslaved person who helped develop churches, schools and affordable housing in the West Boulevard area. Parker died in 1939.
- T.J. Reddy, an artist and civil rights activist who earned degrees at UNC Charlotte. Reddy died in 2019.
The renaming is part of a national push to remove tributes to racism and white supremacy and give more recognition to Black historic figures. Last fall the school board voted to rename Zebulon Vance High for prominent civil rights attorney Julius Chambers.
