A public school in Mississippi named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis is set to change its name to honour Barack Obama, following a student-driven initiative.
Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School in Jackson, in the southern United States, has a 98 per cent black enrollment rate.
The school's parent-teacher association president Janelle Jefferson announced at a board meeting that the community of students, teachers and parents had successfully voted on October 5 to rename the school after the nation's first black president.
“Jefferson Davis, although infamous in his own right, would probably not be too happy about a diverse school promoting the education of the very individuals he fought to keep enslaved being named after him,” Ms Jefferson told the board, according to The Clarion-Ledger.
Former US president Barack Obama. Source: AP
The petition was approved by the board president.
The community was reportedly keen to rename the campus in order to “reflect a person who fully represents ideals and public stances consistent with what we want our children to believe about themselves”.
The school will be renamed Barack Obama IB Elementary School at the beginning of next year.
The move comes as a nationwide debate continues about whether to remove Confederate statues across the country and implement name changes on buildings.
Jefferson Davis was the President of the Confederate States of America throughout the American Civil War between 1861 to 1865.
A statue of Jefferson Davis, left, faces a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Frankfort, Kentucky. Source: AP
During the American Civil War, Confederates wanted to secede from the US and were fighting to achieve a separate country based on "Southern Institutions". The basis of this institution was slavery.
After the war, Jefferson Davis was imprisoned for two years and indicted for treason, despite never being tried.
