School district's 'racist' name divides community: 'The confederacy does not need an outpost in Northern California'

Kristine Solomon


The board of trustees at a school district in California voted 3-1 to remove ‘Dixie’ from the district’s name after a drawn-out debate that’s divided the community.

There was only one board member who abstained on Tuesday from voting on the controversially named Dixie School District in San Rafael, and the outgoing moniker will be replaced by a name yet to be determined, according to CNN. The new name will be left for the residents of Marin County to decide.

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To many members of the community, ‘Dixie’ represented the Antebellum American South and the Confederacy, concepts they didn’t feel represented its culture today. But other community members defend the term, with one telling CNN that the school board was anointed with it in the 19th century as a sympathetic nod to the South — or a tribute to Mary Dixie, a Native American woman from the Miwok tribe.

In February, the board first met to discuss a potential rebranding of the school district, with 13 new names proposed — and all of them shot down by the board. In a last bid, one person even started a petition to try to get the name changed to Sojourner Truth School District.

Noah Griffin, a Marin County resident and co-founder of the initiative Change the Name, told CNN in February that the name Dixie was too reminiscent of slave-ownership, especially as a descendant of slaves himself. “You can’t tell any black person that Dixie means anything other than Confederacy, enslavement, terror and death. It needs to change,” he said. “The confederacy does not need an outpost in Northern California.”

Marnie Glickman, a board trustee who lives in the Dixie School District, led the charge to change the name after members of the community opened her eyes to its problematic connotation. But her advocacy came at a price.

“I decided to be brave enough to speak out because I care about our families of color. They started telling me that this name hurts them and I wanted to muster up the courage,” Glickman told CNN. “I was attacked as a bomb thrower, an arsonist, an outside agitator. There was immediate negative impact.”

Mercy Chiu, a mom with children in the school district, aligns herself with a group called We Are Dixie, which argues that ‘Dixie’ actually predates the Confederacy and does not represent racism or white supremacy. She doesn’t really see what the big deal is.

“Hearing about how [Dixie] hurt people was actually quite new to a lot of folks who had lived here a long time, because they worked really hard to be inclusive and tolerant of all people,” Chiu said. “It’s a very liberal and accepting neighborhood and we were very surprised that this was coming across as our main issue.”

During the campaign for a new name, Glickman even received what she called a “vile anti-Semitic letter” that is now being investigated by the FBI. But she stood her ground, and now she’s proud to have spearheaded the change.

“This was about the Confederacy and nothing more. It hurts people,” Glickman told CNN. “We can choose a name we can all be proud of and that’s real inclusion.”

The Dixie School District board of trustees confirmed on Tuesday that it formed a Naming Advisory Committee to “solicit name ideas, discuss and filter names that have been submitted based on criteria that has been approved by the Board, and present names to the Board in late June.” The committee includes school district parents, staff and alumni.

The new name for Dixie School District will take effect on August 22.

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