People opposed to the school name Robert E. Lee High School and people who want to keep the name stand outside of a special Tyler Independent School Board meeting on a potential name change on Thursday, July 16, 2020.

What our readers are saying on the Tyler Paper Facebook about the name change of John Tyler to Tyler High and Robert E. Lee to Tyler Legacy …

Mark Griffin: Swing and a miss. This town has zero creativity.

Melody C Saunders: JT should have been named after Earl Campbell.

Nicholas Perricone: All that mess… and the name change is what? LOL. good times

Dusty Goodwin: So “JOHN” was the racist part. Good to know.

HB Butcher: Still can’t beat the Lobos!:)

Aneysa Hearron Thedford: I’m just glad everybody will be happy now.

Michelle Dike: Is it too late to petition this? Not a bad name at all, should find support on both sides of the issue, which honestly, is what I thought the result was supposed to get to.

Nicki White: What happens when people start whining about the city name of Tyler? Change both of the school’s name, yet again?

Jennie Bailey: Tyler Legacy sounds like a funeral home…LOL

Andrew Meadville: So … Tyler High is named after Tyler Texas which is named after John Tyler who was himself a slave owner and Confederate Congressman going so far as to be buried under the Confederate Flag. So what the school board accomplished was removing one Confederate name while blatantly keeping the other? Hmmmm …

Mishae Boren: Andrew Meadville I watched the deliberations this morning and the school board basically said that they had a lot of sports jerseys with the initials “TL” on them for “Tyler Lee” so if they kept a name that started with those initials they could save tens of thousands of dollars in replacing those uniforms. Thats why Tyler Legacy was considered. I guess that name had already been proposed … John Tyler going back to Tyler High is much of the same. A convenient choice. Andy Bergfield basically said that he didn’t know why it was ever changed to John Tyler but that it would be an easy transition back…both of the names have “Tyler” in them which is our city and not up for a change as of yet…that’s what I gleaned from the school board meeting. I’m not giving an opinion one way or the other, just explaining the rationale.

Joshua Pirtle: JT was the original HS in Tyler, called Tyler High School. In 1958 REL was built. REL was the whites only school.

Andrew Meadville: That’s wrong. Prior to REL opening Tyler High was the whites only school. It was founded in 1912 long before segregation. The “Colored” school was Emmett Scott High. Tyler ISD didn’t integrate until 1970 when Judge William Wayne Justice forced the school to, 16 years after Brown V. Board of Education.

Donna Moore Dietz: 1970 must have been integration year. Palestine integrated then, too.

Lisa Vaughan Shelton: What everybody is a failing to notice is that the biggest reason why John Tyler ended up being primarily black and Robert E Lee primarily white is simply because of where people lived. It’s not like they bussed black people over to John Tyler to force segregation.