PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Philadelphia school board is expected on Thursday to officially change the name of Andrew Jackson School in South Philly to the Fanny Jackson Coppin School.
The move marks the culmination of several years of activism at the elementary school, located at 12th and Federal streets.
The school community voted in the spring, and an overwhelming majority preferred the name be changed to Fanny Jackson Coppin School.
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Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, opposed limiting slavery, and his efforts to drive indigenous people from their land led to the infamous Trail of Tears. Jackson Coppin was a Philadelphia teacher and principal who was freed from slavery as a child.
Principal Kelly Espinosa acknowledged the school is being renamed from one Jackson to another, but she sees a symmetry of social justice.
“It is coincidental, but I do think there is a beautiful juxtaposition of having a female former enslaved individual now be the new name of our school juxtaposed to our former name,” she said.
The school is already planning to replace the name on its 96-year-old building.
“There’ll be some surveying that will be done,” Espinosa said. “We’ve already done some of that preliminary work to identify the places where Andrew Jackson’s name is in the building, and we will be working closely with the school district to coordinate those efforts.”
A school council will decide how to welcome students back in the fall.
“Reminding students as to the name change and why we did it is also going to be a big component of our rebranding, in a sense,” Espinosa added.