A name change for Twain?

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By Tim Hadac

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Alumni angry over possibility

A dustup over a possible name change for Garfield Ridge’s oldest elementary school appears to be straight ahead.

Mark Twain Elementary School opened its doors at 51^st and Linder in 1927 and still serves the community there.

News of the possible name change was disclosed publicly by Twain alumnus Rob Bitunjac, who serves as a founder and president of the Clear-Ridge Historical Society.

“My family has been associated with Mark Twain since it first opened in 1927…my grandmother attended the first class, and continued with my father, myself and my children,” he said. “My wife currently works at the school and while speaking to the new principal, Mr. [Matthew] Moline, we learned that there is talk of renaming many schools.”

A view of Twain Elementary School from its northeast corner. The school’s name is mostly obscured by what appears to be years of accumulated grime. –Greater Southwest News-Herald photo by Tim Hadac

Bitunjac said a name change may be considered “for a myriad of reasons, among them, cultural appropriation and relevancy to the current community.”

He was to meet Moline earlier this week to obtain an update. Bitunjac said Moline “is adamantly against the name change” and is seeking input from the community.

Eager to offer input immediately were many of the 1,200-member Twain alumni group on Facebook.

“I’m going to do everything I can to preserve its name,” one alumna posted. “I’d love to start a petition.”

“[Twain] wasn’t a politician or a slave owner, he was an author,” an alumnus added. “People are getting dumber by the day. We all read Mark Twain during our school years.”

A member of the Class of 1967 asked, “Seriously? No. Whoever is offended, tough. Keep the name. Move along and find something else to change.”

“This [woke] sh~t is outta hand,” another alumnus wrote succinctly.

A Garfield Ridge resident who asked that his name be withheld said, “We should never be afraid to examine the idea of changing the names of streets, parks, schools and other public properties, but we should never do so because of cancel culture, because we fear ideas. I suspect that’s what’s going on here.

“I wonder how many people behind this name change have ever read one of Twain’s works,” he continued. “Twain himself once wrote, ‘The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.’ I think that’s something the woke mob at the Chicago Public Schools should ponder.”

Background

It has been fashionable among some to bash Twain for his most famous novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and his inclusion of a character he called Nigger Jim, a black man fleeing slavery in the pre-Civil War South.

Twain supporters have long argued that the author crafted Jim as an intelligent, compassionate and therefore heroic figure in a literary work that is ultimately anti-racism. Twain detractors have long argued that Jim is not much more than a minstrel-show stereotype and point out that that Twain used the racial slur more than 200 times in the book.

Twain’s work was controversial from the beginning. But it wasn’t until the 1950s when the NAACP began lodging public complaints against the work that the anti-Twain movement gathered the momentum it still has today. Beginning in the 1980s, schools and school boards began removing Twain’s works from their required reading lists. Some called for and succeeded in banning the book from libraries.

Nearly 40 years ago, a researcher uncovered a Twain letter from 1885 that supporters say clearly establishes Twain as a foe of racism.

According to a 1985 story in the New York Times, Twain wrote to a law school dean and offered to pay the expenses of a black student in need.

The story continued:

“I do not believe I would very cheerfully help a white student who would ask a benevolence of a stranger,” Twain wrote Francis Wayland, the law school dean, on Dec. 24, 1885, ”but I do not feel so about the other color. We have ground the manhood out of them, & the shame is ours, not theirs; & we should pay for it.”

Twain added that he would like to know the cost of the student’s expenses ”so that I may send 6, 12, or 24 months’ board as the size of the bill may determine.” In fact, Twain financed the student’s board until his graduation in 1887.

Should Twain Elementary School be renamed, it won’t be the first time on the Southwest Side. Three miles east of the school, Tonti Elementary School, 5815 S. Homan, was renamed earlier this year after nearly a century with its name.

Enrico Tonti (1649-1704) was an explorer who helped establish European settlements along the Mississippi River. On at least one voyage, there were slaves in Tonti’s party, although it is unclear whether Tonti himself was the slave owner.

The school was renamed Monarcas Academy after a school and community vote was held.