Parents in Texas Complain about High School being named "Lebanon" High

[JI7]

want to call it "Freedom High" instead

<Lebanon High, the school board's choice, is just a bit too, shall we say, foreign.

School district officials picked the name because the building, currently under construction and set to open next year, sits in the middle of what was once an old farming town called Lebanon, before it was incorporated into modern-day Frisco.

"Memories of Lebanon may be found throughout Frisco," the school district writes in a publication explaining the name. There's a road and a Baptist church that still bear the name, and there even used to be a Lebanon school, although it closed in 1947.

According to the Dallas Morning News, which covered the event, Ms Skender suggested "Freedom High" as an alternative - and provided the officials with emails supporting her pick.

It turns out Lebanon isn't all that uncommon a name for US. There are at least 19 of them dotting the map, from Oregon to Maine.

According to University of California, Santa Cruz Prof Nathaniel Deutsch, there is a history of Middle Eastern named towns in the US - although it sometimes has little to do with the national origins of their founders.

"Such names should be seen as part of the broader flowering of romantic Orientalism in America's heartland during the second half of the nineteenth century," he writes in the 2009 book Inventing America's "Worst" Family: Eugenics, Islam, and the Fall and Rise of the Tribe of Ishmael. >


http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30941640

[immoderate]

1. Will "Freedom High" have a rule book?

--imm

[elleng]

2. Cairo, Illinois:

Nearly a century and a half later, Lewis and Clark left Fort Massac, Illinois and arrived in the vicinity of what would later become Cairo in November, 1803. Here, they worked jointly on their first scientific research and description; to study the geography at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. On November 16, they began the diplomatic phase of their journey when they visited the Wilson City area of Mississippi County, Missouri, and met with Delaware and Shawnee Indian chiefs. They ended their surveys at Cairo on November 19th, and proceeded up the Mississippi River, now working against the current.

The first attempt at settlement occurred in 1818 when John G. Comegys of Baltimore, obtained a charter to incorporate the city and the Bank of Cairo from the Territorial Legislature. He bought 1,800 acres on the peninsula and named it “Cairo,” because it was presumed to resemble that of Cairo, Egypt.

Working along with Comegys, was Shadrach Bond, who was the first governor of Illinois. These men and other speculators invested and tried to develop Cairo into one of the nation's great cities.

The land of the peninsula was to be made into lots and sold, a portion of the money put into improvements, and the rest of it was to constitute the capital of the bank. The peninsula was surveyed and a city laid off. However, when Comegys died in 1820, his plan died with him. But, he left behind a contribution in his choice of the name Cairo, and as a result, “Egypt” became the popular nickname for southern Illinois.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/il-cairo.html

[shenmue]

3. Uhhhh

Dumb!

[raging moderate]

4. Southern Illinois really earned the name "Egypt" during a Northern Illinois crop failure.

At some point, the Northern Illinois farmers experienced a horrible weather cycle that ruined most of their crops. Many of them traveled to Southern Illinois to buy seed to restart their farms. Mostly well-versed in the Bible, they spoke of "going down to Egypt to buy grain." Northern Illinois was really grateful for the warm hospitality of Southern Illinois during that time.