- [Narrator] A Confederate general no longer casts a shadow on an Amarillo Elementary school after looming large for nearly 70 years.

Robert E. Lee Elementary School in North Amarillo opened to white students only in the early 1950s, during segregation.

- For them to name it Robert E. Lee was a slap in the face because I guarantee you the individuals who voted on that school name, there wasn't any Black person in the whole room.

So, and the time period that it was named, it was done purposely.

- [Narrator] According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the use of Confederate symbols in public spaces spiked from the 1900s through the 1920s alongside adoption of Jim Crow segregation laws and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.

It spiked again in the 1950s and sixties during the Civil Rights Movement.

In recent years, there's been a groundswell of support for removing the monuments.

The Amarillo NAACP began lobbying for a new name for the Robert E. Lee campus in 2017.

- All the elementary schools, except that one, were named after the district they're a part of, like Wolflin, Avondale, San Jacinto and so forth.

- [Narrator] In January 2018, a controversial vote of the school board shortened the campus' name simply to Lee.

But Amarillo NAACP approached Loomis again after a district election and three trustee resignations changed the entire makeup of the board.

- And so this time when we came back in and talked about Robert E. Lee, we asked them about what's the policy for naming schools in Amarillo.

You don't have a policy?

Can we get a policy?

So they issued a policy saying all elementary schools should be named after a famous person from Amarillo, or for the neighborhood they're in.

All middle schools will be named after Texas heroes.

And all high schools will be named after landforms: The Tascosa, the Caprock, Palo Duro, Amarillo.

Great, this is your policy?

Vote on it?

Yeah, good.

So, then I come back two weeks later and say, "You gotta follow your policy.

"Robert E. Lee never lived in Amarillo, Texas."

Yeah, that neighborhood isn't Robert E. Lee neighborhood.

It's called Park Hill.

And so when we put that proposal to them they agreed and they voted unanimously to change the name of that school.

- And so it just made sense that if we had any kid that walked in the door and somehow it sent the wrong message to a kid.

Don't care what you believe about one side or the other.

I don't wanna get -- I try not to get caught up in the political issues of the day, but when I walk in and I'm AISD superintendent, what I'm looking at is Johnny, Billy, whomever, that is walking right through that door and is there anything that is keeping that kid from being successful?

And it was just...

It was clear to me, and the recommendation I made to the board is, if we've got a name of a school that somehow is isolating, (melancholic music) causing kids not to be successful, causing them to question who they are, their heritage, their culture, we need to change that.

(mournful music)