Tuesday, Feb. 18, the Williamsburg-James City County School Board convened to discuss a potential name change to James Blair Middle School. The three-hour meeting, which welcomed public comments from teachers, parents, students and residents, resulted in the board voting 5-1 to establish an administrative name change committee.
Over the next three months, the committee will closely review historical information, survey to gauge community opinion and share their findings with the board.
According to the WJCC school board’s website, the committee will compose 2-3 students, parents, and faculty from the middle school, as well as school board members, an administrator, residents and the assistant superintendent for school leadership.
If approved, the change would take effect in August 2025.
James Blair co-founded the College of William and Mary in 1693, then served as its first president for 50 years until his death in 1743. During his tenure, Blair relied on slave labor from the region’s native inhabitants to build the College’s infrastructure.
The Committee for Contextualization of Campus Landmarks and Iconography outlined Blair’s role in exploiting slave labor for the College’s benefit on its website.
“He enslaved the natives of the land in order to provide students for the Indian School at the College, which in turn created more revenue for the College,” CCL&I’s website reads. “Blair often employed slavery when it would be of financial benefit to the College and therefore himself. He was the first to introduce enslaved people to the College, leasing his own personal enslaved people to the College to aid in its construction.”
The CCL&I’s 2023-24 Findings and Landscape Report, released last November, revealed that 25.75% of the College’s buildings are currently named after enslavers.
The College did not rename James Blair Hall, which houses the Lyon G. Gardiner history department, in 2021 following a months-long community effort to rename campus buildings named after racist figures. In April 2021, Morton, Taliaferro and Tyler Halls became Boswell, Willis and Chancellors Halls, respectively.
Associate Director of the Lemon Project Sarah E. Thomas explained that while the College decided not to rename Blair Hall, the Principles of Naming and Renaming Working Group recommended in their February 2021 report to College President Katherine Rowe that historical context be provided for the statue in Blair’s name.
“They did recommend specific renamings and contextualized statues and portraits of Benjamin Ewell, John Tyler, as well as James Blair, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe,” Thomas said.
Thomas outlined the Lemon Project’s role in reviewing applications for name changes, including making recommendations to rename or contextualize campus landmarks.
“Anyone can submit an application,” Thomas said. “When an application is submitted, we’re a committee with the Lemon Project and Special Collections, and we go through the applications, we go through the citations and check everything, and then we say, ‘yes, those citations are correct,’ and then we move it forward.”
Thomas shared that the College never received an application to rename Blair Hall amid calls for historical reconciliation. No applications have been submitted since 2022.
“We haven’t received an application in a long time,” Thomas said. “At least the Lemon Project has not.”
Calls to rename James Blair Middle School intensified in recent weeks, citing Blair’s legacy as a slaveholder. At the WJCC school board meeting, community members expressed mixed views over forming a name change committee.
Williamsburg resident Susan Franz argued that institutional culture affects students’ experience and sense of acceptance more than a school’s name.
“A name does not cause an environment to be equal or unequal, oppressive or non-oppressive,” Franz said. “A name is just a name. On the other hand, school culture can cause feelings of inequality or oppression.”
Franz shared her belief that raising student performance should be a more urgent priority for the WJCC school board than changing the middle school’s name.
“Board and staff time is better spent determining how to improve the abysmal math and English scores of our students,” Franz said. “No matter what race they are, that is what would benefit them more than planting an idea that the name of a school or any building has some power over who they are or what they can achieve.”
Camille Batts ’26 spoke at the Feb. 18 school board meeting on behalf of CCL&I. She endorsed the middle school’s name change, connecting it to CCL&I’s core mission.
“Much of our work aligns with this campaign to rename James Blair Middle School, and we are here tonight to show that we as students and community members support our local community,” Batts said. “To consider renaming James Blair is to pave the way for James Blair Middle School students, present, past and future, to feel welcome.”
Batts emphasized that keeping the school’s name would further isolate Black students, encouraging the board to consider another figure that would bring positive change.
“For Black students to attend a school named after a man who perpetuated and institutionalized enslavement, whose ideals were then utilized to resist integration, is completely unacceptable,” she said. “Names hold immense power, and there are ways to use this power to memorialize figures who represent the values and morals we hope to instill in the community.”
Alynn Parham M.A.Ed. ’18 is a social studies teacher at Jamestown High School who spearheaded the addition of African-American history courses to the curriculum. Parham advocated for the name change at the school board meeting.
“I would encourage the board to support the renaming of James Blair Middle School,” Parham said.
Molly Robinson is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the College. She denounced Blair’s use of religious arguments to uphold slavery.
“By now, you’re well aware that James Blair founded the College of William and Mary by enslaving people,” Robinson said. “But Blair was also an ordained Anglican minister and used perversions of the Bible to justify slavery and to turn a profit in the Virginia colony. For Blair, Christianity was a vehicle for economic conquest.”
Robinson mentioned the segregationist principles that inspired the then-high school to be named after James Blair in 1955, calling for a name change that promotes inclusivity.
“James Blair laid the foundation for segregationist ideology that took hold in the last century, when this school was named for him,” Robinson said. “For us, the path forward is simple. We must change the name of James Blair Middle School.”
Sen. Mayer Tawfik ’27 served as lead sponsor of a November 2024 Student Assembly resolution entitled “Naming Architecture with Meaningful Epigraphs.”
Tawfik shared the resolution’s goal of boosting student involvement in renaming campus landmarks. Concerns over a lack of community input surfaced after the College renamed Brown Hall to Gates Hall in March 2024.
“The bill was sort of in response to what we felt was a lack of student involvement in the naming process,” Tawfik said. “Hopefully, we’re aiming to have students be active participants in the process and active agents for change. But baseline, if that doesn’t happen, at least it would be a way for administration to gauge what reactions would be from students.”
Tawfik reflected on both sides of the middle school’s name change debate.
“There is an argument to be made that this is history and you can’t erase history and you have to learn from it,” Tawfik said. “But at the same time, you could learn history without making an icon out of people who have oppressed other people, who have done horrible things and who have pushed this image of dominance throughout the years.”
Tawfik addressed the effect of a building’s name on students’ sense of belonging at the College, which he feels should be universal.
“Regardless of whether there are valid reasons to keep the name, you can’t deny that some students will feel alienated and that students will look at that and sort of question the motives of the university,” Tawfik said. “And that’s not really what we want. We want students to feel welcome. We always say, ‘who comes here belongs here,’ and we kind of have to prove it. We kind of have to demonstrate it.”
