PJU’s letter to the school board

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Museum

Charles A. Lindbergh in front of the Spirit of St. Louis. The plane Lindbergh flew on May 20-21, 1927 across the Atlantic.

Egalitarian Staff
May 27, 2022

Dear President Bergquist, Superintendent Pattenaude, and Members of the Board,

We are members of the student club, Pro Justice Union (PJU), who were invited to present to you at the October 13th school board meeting last year. During our presentation, we spoke about the student-led professional development we’ve run at Lindbergh High School, including sharing student survey data with staff and asking for feedback, as well as running community-building circles. We appreciate hearing your feedback, and thank you for supporting the student voice. Today, we are writing to you as representatives of a majority of student and staff survey respondents concerned about the name of our school and what it represents. Charles A. Lindbergh was a known white supremacist and Nazi-sympathizer. This is not a name nor a person who represents the student body, staff or community of Lindbergh High School.

To continue with why our school’s name should be changed, just this past year in 2021 Governor Jay Inslee signed a law into effect that schools could not use Native American names and symbols due to the inappropriate misuse of them, and while the name Charles A. Lindbergh does not fall under this, it begs the question of why we allow the name of a Nazi-sympathizer who pushed for anti-Semitic culture in America to be the name of one of our schools in Washington, further allowing an anti-Semitic culture to brew?Charles A. Lindbergh wrote, ”Imagine the United States taking these Jews in addition to those we already have. There are too many in places like New York already. A few Jews add strength and character to a country, but too many create chaos. And we are getting too many” (Ward), in one of his journals along with, “With all the things we criticize, he is undoubtedly a great man…He is a fanatic in many ways…Hitler has accomplished results (good in addition to bad), which could hardly have been accomplished without some fanaticism” (Berg). With these statements we can see clear examples of his anti-Semitic behavior.

For further reason of why we should change the name from Charles A. Lindbergh, he also was a white supremacist, writing in a published piece for Readers Digest that, “We can have peace and security only as long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races,” as well as, “Aviation…one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown” (Hitchens).

For these reasons we believe our school’s name should be changed to something that better represents the diverse community here at Lindbergh and we as representatives of PJU are not the only ones who feel this way. In February of 2020 we were given permission to survey Lindbergh’s student body and staff and found 87% of staff respondents supported the change and 56% of student respondents also supported the change with 27% of the remaining voting students asking for more time to think about their decision. Due to the majority staff and student respondent support we are formally calling for a name change per Renton School District Policy 6970. We also know that getting the name changed throughout the school can be a lengthy process, however, our school is about to go under construction which could ease the process of updating the name throughout our school.

We understand a renaming process would involve the superintendent and school board creating a committee to gather input from the community and to develop a list of names for consideration. If you agree that creating a committee makes sense, we would love for PJU to be represented on the committee if possible. Thank you for listening to our concerns and hearing our voice as a school. We appreciate your time and look forward to working with you to change the name of Lindbergh to a more positive figure in our community, just as other schools in the district are named after. We would love to continue communicating with you through this meaningful process.

Best Regards,

PJU at Lindbergh High School