PEORIA, Ill. (AP) - The name of a Peoria school will change from Thomas Jefferson to a civil rights activist.
The school board unanimously voted to drop Jefferson's name from a school during a meeting Monday night. The third president of the United States owned slaves.
The school will be known as C.T. Vivian Primary School, starting July 1.
Vivian staged sit-ins against segregation in Peoria in the 1940s, a years before lunch-counter protests by college students made national news. He was a key adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Vivian died in 2020.
Peoria is looking at possible changes at other schools named for aviator Charles Lindbergh, George Washington and Calvin Coolidge.
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