A Tacoma school changed its name over racism concerns. It was complicated | Opinion
Lisa Gibbs distinctly recalls when the weight of the decision to rename McCarver Elementary School hit her — the precise moment it became clear how much it meant to so many people around her.
Gibbs is a new principal in Tacoma Public Schools this year; it’s the 53-year-old’s first time taking the reins at a local elementary, having previously served as a teacher and an assistant principal with the district, most recently at Manitou Park in South Tacoma.
She told me her new position, working on Hilltop, is a “dream job” she’s coveted since the day she decided she wanted to be a principal in Tacoma, where she grew up and spent much of her youth.
For her students, Gibbs’s arrival isn’t the only big change this year.
The red brick schoolhouse many already know so well also has a new name: Edna Travis Elementary.
It’s one of Tacoma’s most diverse schools, where nearly 80% of students qualified as low-income last year and roughly one in five met the federal McKinney-Vento definition of homeless.
Gibbs told me the new name has provided a much-needed fresh start and an opportunity to turn an important page at the school — and the surrounding Hilltop community.
That moment she remembers with such clarity?
It happened not long after she arrived, shortly after the school board had approved the brand-new name, she told me.
“The school wants to be out in the neighborhood. So we spent about two hours walking around and handing out flyers about the name change and welcoming families back to school. … We met so many people — so many community neighbors — who either personally knew Edna Travis, were mentored by her or attended her church,” Gibbs said, citing the exact date by memory: Aug. 4.
“I was talking with one gentleman who lives within like three blocks of the building, and he teared up; he wiped his face,” she continued. “He was so proud to know that someone who was so important and critical to his success was going to be honored.
“He cried, right there in front of our staff,” Gibbs explained.
“I think in that moment, I realized what a big deal it is.”
Why?
Morton Matthew McCarver, whose name had been on the school since 1926, was one of the men who helped found the Tacoma we know today. He was also a vocal racist — an inglorious truth recently brought to full light by former Tacoma mayor and local historian Bill Baarsma, Gibbs noted.
The Rev. Edna Travis, on the other hand, was a fixture on Hilltop for roughly five decades — a groundbreaking servant leader and one of Tacoma’s most influential Black pastors.
Still, if the decision to remove McCarver’s name from the school’s name was a no-brainer, the process of actually of choosing a name to replace it — which took nearly a full year and cost roughly $50,000, and was the result of a recommendation from an 18-member committee — was anything but easy, according to some of the people involved.
As we’ve seen firsthand in recent years, naming public places after historically significant people — whether it’s a park, a school or a military base — can be precarious and fraught, particularly given the inevitable way society’s views and values evolve over time.
On Tuesday, Gibbs said it was worth it — at least at this school, and in this neighborhood.
“It’s great that the community decided they wanted to have a different name for the building,” Gibbs told me.
“They didn’t want the reputation anymore of supporting (McCarver’s name and beliefs), which don’t match up with the kind of school that we want to be.”
Lengthy renaming process
The renaming of Edna Travis Elementary, which will include a community celebration at the school on Friday, Sept. 22, dates back to August 2022.
That’s when Baarsma, who served two terms as mayor and is a past president of the Tacoma Historical Society board of directors, dropped his bombshell (of sorts) on the district, most of which had been hiding in plain sight for decades, in history books and the writings of the late Murray Morgan.
Tacoma Public Schools had recently renamed what’s now Silas High School, in honor of Dolores Silas, a Tacoma educator who later became the first woman of color to serve on the City Council — and Tacoma’s first Black female deputy mayor. The district also recently renamed what’s now known as Hilltop Heritage Middle School.
In both cases, the district’s decisions came in response to concerns raised by residents and students, which included unearthing the hurtful words and actions of people who once had their names associated with the schools.
Respectively, former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson — who has been described in recent years as “extremely racist — even by the standards of his time,” and Jason Lee, a Pacific Northwest missionary whose views and treatment of Native Americans are indelibly linked to cultural genocide and abuse, both had their names removed from Tacoma schools.
Officially changing the name of a Tacoma public school requires petitioning the district and earning the support of the elected school board. It’s a formal process, established in TPS bylaws, that typically involves extensive surveys, committee work and the recommendation of a new name being forwarded to the school board for consideration — including a formal public vote.
On Wednesday, Baarsma said he took the potential significance of his historical digging seriously.
Having grown up in Tacoma and attended the University of Puget Sound, Baarsma said the reckoning he saw in the renaming of Silas and Hilltop Heritage — and the difference it made in the city he’s dedicated much of his life to — helped him realize there was more work to be done.
“I began to think back at reading Murray Morgan’s book, and in particular, the comments he made relative to Morton Matthew McCarver … who was a white supremacist who believed in apartheid,” Baarsma explained.
“I thought, ‘Gosh, here’s a school in this central area of Tacoma, on Hilltop, named after a person who had those beliefs,” Baarsma continued.
“That troubled me, so I did some further research and submitted it to the school board … and they felt it was sufficient to trigger the process of considering renaming of the school.”
Honoring the community’s voice
According to Tacoma Public Schools spokesperson Kathryn McCarthy, one of the district’s first steps was forming the committee that ultimately made the recommendation to rename the school in honor of Travis, which included parents, students and staff from the school — along with a few vested community members, like Baarsma.
Tacoma’s former mayor told me it became clear before long that reaching a unanimous consensus could be challenging.
The renaming committee conducted outreach, collecting survey results from across Hilltop through various channels, McCarthy said, including social media and physical fliers.
In all, more than 800 responses were collected from the community, staff, families and students, with nearly 75% of respondents indicating their support for a name change, according to data provided to The News Tribune by Tacoma Public Schools.
Roughly three out of four respondents recommended renaming the school after a local role model, the district’s data suggests.
Robert Penton, who was on the renaming committee, told me that one theme in particular became clear as survey results began to be analyzed: “Dr. Travis’ name just kept coming up,” he told me — with good reason.
From her humble New Covenant Pentecostal Tabernacle church on the corner of South 23rd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, just blocks from the school that now bears her name, Travis did much more than preach, Penton said — she saved lives.
At the height of Hilltop’s national infamy as a place overrun by gangs, drugs and crime, Travis contributions are well documented: She helped hold a struggling neighborhood together — all while feeding the needy, ministering to the incarcerated and offering hope and unwavering grace to everyone who surrounded her.
In many Hilltop homes Travis, who died in 2019, is revered to this day, Penton said, and removing McCarver’s name and replacing it hers was an idea that quickly garnered community support.
“There were many other names that I felt were equally worthy of the attention, but I think the reason why we leaned toward Dr. Travis was because it was the sentiment of the majority of the community,” Penton told me.
“We certainly didn’t want to violate their expression and support,” he added. “To me, that was the deciding factor.”
Difficult conversations
Penton is right: other options were considered for replacing McCarver. The names included Nettie Asberry, who founded the first chapter of the NAACP west of Kansas City from her home only blocks away from the school, and local African American luminaries like Earnest Brazill, Maxine Mimms and Harold Moss, Tacoma’s first Black mayor.
The committee met a total of eight times, from January to May 2023, according to Tacoma Public Schools. The group’s discussions were often passionate, Baarsma said, a description Penton confirmed.
According to both men, two big, thorny issues emerged once Travis’ name made its way to the top of the list, which required the committee to take its time and approach the important decision thoughtfully.
For starters, Travis was a long-time, influential member of the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, a group that includes leaders from many of the city’s historically Black churches. Two decades ago, the Ministerial Alliance spearheaded an ultimately futile effort to repeal Tacoma’s newly passed anti-discrimination policy, which prohibited employment and housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and Travis’ connection to the Alliance was enough to give at least a few people pause, Baarsma said.
The committee vetted Travis’ involvement in the Alliance to the best of its ability, Baarsma told me, but found no evidence she took part in the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.
Baarsma recalled another sticking point, which at least in his mind was even more troubling, especially once it became clear Travis likely had the most support among the 18 committee members.
Travis was a pastor, he noted — someone whose legacy is leading a church and promoting the Christian faith — which directly conflicts with the separation of church and state, Baarsma maintains to this day.
“I always saw private schools — like St. Pat’s and St. Leo’s and Bellarmine — were named after religious figures. And public schools were named after non-religious figures. That was ingrained in me, and it’s important,” Baarsma said.
“But as the discussion kind of went on and on, I was the only person who really felt strongly about it,” Baarsma added. “So at that point, I had my say, it was very respectful, and … I kind of stepped aside.”
Pierce County Council member Ryan Mello wasn’t a part of the renaming committee, but as an openly LGBTQ elected leader, he said he followed its work closely.
Mello said this week he appreciates the rigor and thought that went into the recommendation to rename the school in honor of Travis, even as he acknowledged hearing concerns from the community along the way.
“I think they took it seriously,” Mello told me.
Asked to reflect on the lengthy renaming process at Edna Travis Elementary, Baarsma said he suspects that any future effort to rename a public school in Tacoma will likely focus on places and geographical landmarks, like the renaming of Hilltop Heritage in 2021.
A century ago Tacoma leaders thought naming a school after McCarver was a great idea, after all — but it was a flawed decision that failed to hold up to legitimate contemporary scrutiny, for what now seems like obvious reasons, Baarsma said.
“If (TPS) ever entertains this again, I doubt they’ll be renaming schools after people,” Baarsma told me.
“I think that’s probably a safe thing to do.”
Travis’ legacy on Hilltop
Penton — who most often goes as Pastor Bob — has a background in Tacoma much longer than his participation on Tacoma Public Schools’ renaming committee.
A former Black Panther who arrived here in 1967, via Los Angeles, through the Volunteers in Service of America Program, Penton said he encountered Travis not long after getting acclimated to his new home and immediately pegged the groundbreaking Black pastor as someone “steeped in the Hilltop community.”
It was a first impression that proved accurate, Penton said: By 2000, the year Travis celebrated her 30th year at New Covenant Pentecostal Tabernacle and turned 72, the free meals program she launched in the 1980s provided roughly 1,800 meals a month, according to The News Tribune archives.
During more than 50 years leading the Hilltop church, Travis also helped to organize once-a-month services at McNeil Island Corrections Center.
She also regularly visited local hospitals and nursing homes, and as Penton recalled, worked alongside him to establish one of the area’s first public child care programs for local school children.
“I just really fell in love with her because she was passionate about transformation,” said Penton, who served as the first program director of the Hilltop Action Coalition.
“She was really just adamant,” he said, “particularly about what she saw as the needs of the community.”
‘Empowering’ the students
Back at the freshly renamed Edna Travis Elementary, new principal Gibbs was busy this week, but that comes with the territory, she said.
Friday’s public celebration of the school’s name was quickly approaching, but mostly, Gibbs said she’s focused on what happens inside the building.
Given all the challenges the kids at Edna Travis Elementary face, I asked Gibbs why a new name matters?
What does it mean to the community, and, most of all, what it means to the kids?
a beat, Gibbs told me that she can see the impact on her new students’ faces every day, and hear it in their young voices, she said.
“Our school is in an area where there’s a high population of individuals who have historically been overlooked and unseen, marginalized, kept down and mistreated,” Gibbs said.
“For elementary kids to have this opportunity, to go through the renaming process, it’s very empowering,” the new principal added.
“They’ve certainly been talking about it — a lot.”
Correction: This column originally misidentified Lisa Gibbs’ previous place of employment. Before being hired at Edna Travis Elementary, Gibbs worked for Tacoma Public Schools at Manitou Park Elementary in South Tacoma.
This story was originally published September 22, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
