Harford County Board of Education receives petition to restore names of slave owners to two elementary schools

Oct. 9—The Harford County Board of Education has received a 69-page petition recommending that the names of slave owners be reinstated on two elementary schools.

The petition asks that Old Post Road Elementary School and Harford Academy be renamed William Paca Elementary School and John Archer School, respectively. The Board of Education voted on the new names in June 2022 after deciding in March of that year to remove the existing names, which have ties to slavery. This is the second school year that the new names have been used.

The Board of Education learned about the new petition from Moms for Liberty Harford County chapter chair Suzie Scott during the public comments session at the board's Sept. 18 meeting, and received an electronic copy of the petition the following day.

"Harford County is celebrating its 250th year of existence, and I would like to point to a recent travesty of our superintendent and the previous board with regards to Harford County history," said Scott. "He [Superintendent Sean Bulson] based it on a Change.org petition that he said had support from the community, and that there were 1,500 people who wanted to see this done. He also said this [the petition to remove the names] was student-led. I got the Change.org petition. I didn't count if there were 1,500 names or not but I did count how many people were actually from Harford County."

The electronic petition from Change.org that Bulson referred to was started by Andie Verbus on June 5, 2020, to encourage the school system to remove the Paca and Archer names. At the time it was submitted to the school board, it had 1,500 signatures. Scott claims that she reviewed the signatures and only 375 were county residents, based on the addresses the signers provided. The petition now contains 2,077 signatures.

The proposed change was included on the school board's agenda that was posted for public viewing on the Harford County Public Schools' website on March 11, 2022, in advance of the March 14, 2022, meeting at which the proposal was introduced.

"Environments for student learning, extracurricular activities and other school-sponsored activities shall be designed by the school system as to be equitable, fair, safe, diverse and inclusive," Bulson said in his presentation to the board that night.

The subject was also discussed at length in public comments during that meeting and again at the June 13, 2022, school board meeting, when the name changes were approved.

However, Scott said residents in the county were unaware the names had been changed. So, on June 14 — Flag Day — this year, her Moms for Liberty chapter started its own paper petition to restore the original names.

"William Paca and John Archer are pioneers in the history of our county, state and nation," Scott said in a statement to The Aegis. "William Paca signed the Declaration of Independence. John Archer fought in the War for Independence. If it weren't for these men, we would not have a United States of America. That the Harford County Board of Education voted unanimously to erase them from our history speaks volumes. The citizens of Harford County were not consulted and the ones we spoke to were not happy with the School Board's action."

In response, the NAACP Harford County Chapter sent an email on Sept. 28 to members of the County Council, Board of Education and Bulson, stating that no one can pretend not to know about Paca and Archer's racist views, or their positions as owners of enslaved people.

"It was very discouraging and disappointing for me to see so many public leaders sign on to this document," said NAACP Harford County president Vicki Jones. "What it tells me is that we need to have a deeper conversation in the community about how these things affect the mental health [and] the right to be, for people of color in this county."

In a Facebook post, the Harford NAACP said that Moms for Liberty has convinced some government leaders and others to restore a "celebration of slavery" to Harford County by signing a petition to restore Paca and Archer's names to the two schools.

The email listed Harford officials who signed the Moms for Liberty petition, including Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly, Harford County Council member Aaron Penman and Harford State's Attorney Alison Healey.

Both the NAACP and the school board provided The Aegis with copies of the petition, which shows other Harford officials who signed the petition, including County Council member Jim Reilly, Havre de Grace Police Chief Teresa Walter and state Del. Susan McComas.

When reached for comment, both Reilly and Walter said they did not sign the petition.

But Penman confirmed he signed the petition, saying he didn't think it was right for the school names to have been changed in the first place.

"There are a lot of mistakes that we made in history," Penman said. "I think we have learned from those mistakes, but erasing them from the history books, I don't think it's the right thing to do."

McComas also verified to The Aegis that she signed the petition. She, too, said she was concerned with the deleting of history.

"I do believe that if we erase history, we're doomed to repeat it," McComas said.

However, McComas now says she has "buyer's remorse," and admitted she's not sure if signing the petition was the right or wrong thing to do, and that she didn't know as much of the background on the issue as she should have.

"It's a complicated issue," she said. "My intention was not to upset the community."

Cassilly, through a spokesperson, provided a statement to The Aegis, citing William Paca's accomplishments but not confirming whether he signed Scott's petition.

"As with any historic figure, it would have been better if William Paca had moved aggressively to end slavery in his lifetime," Cassilly said in the statement. "However, that fact does not lessen his many important accomplishments, which made the seemingly impossible goal of ending slavery achievable just 66 years after his death."

The Aegis reached out to Healey by text and email for comment, but she had not responded by Friday afternoon.

The William Paca Elementary School in Abingdon was built in 1964 as a second building on the Philadelphia Road campus of Old Post Elementary School, which was built in 1956.

William Paca was born in Abingdon in 1740 and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a federal judge who served in the Maryland legislature and became governor of the state. However, he also owned more than 100 enslaved people.

Towson University removed his name and that of Charles Carroll, who also owned slaves, from student dormitories in 2021, a year after Towson formed a 10-member committee of students, faculty and staff members to decide if it was appropriate to rename the buildings under the university's current naming guidelines. The two residence halls at Towson University have been renamed for the school's first Black graduates — Marvis Barnes and Myra Harris.

The John Archer School serves special needs students in prekindergarten through grade 12. Its Bel Air campus was built in 1971.

Archer, born in 1741 near Churchville, was a Harford County physician who served in the Revolutionary War, held various government positions and served in Congress, but he also owned slaves.

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The Morning Sun

There is a policy in place that sets the process for deciding on Harford County Public School building names, according to Bulson.

"It has come to my attention that another petition is circulating to reinstate the previous names of these schools. Ultimately, the decision to name or rename a building rests with a vote of the Board of Education of Harford County," said Bulson. "While I understand the argument that John Archer and William Paca, who were owners of enslaved people, are part of our history, I want to emphasize that the decision to change the names was made with the intention of moving forward and ensuring our school environments are free from associations with figures who perpetuated harm and inequality."

Bulson continued: "Attitudes about how we view history are constantly evolving. We will continue to teach the history of our nation, state and community, but we shouldn't be returning to a place where we ask children whose ancestors may have been victims of the institution of slavery to walk through the doors of a building named for someone who contributed to that institution."