Dear Midland: The Lee Trend We Joined in 1961 — and What It Means for 2025
Midland’s Robert E. Lee High School opened in 1961 and was renamed Legacy High School in 2020. Though both decisions were made locally, they reflected broader trends across Texas and the United States.
In this post, I hope to provide some national, statewide, and local context that I was unaware of growing up here––and that I believe our community should consider now. This context is particularly relevant because current MISD trustee Josh Guinn has publicly indicated that he intends to advocate for renaming the school again as Midland Lee. Our community––including our trustees––should be well-informed, particularly as references to “our heritage” are invoked.
The Context of the Naming in 1961
At least seventeen public schools in Texas were named after Robert E. Lee. The first opened in Denton in 1909, the last in Eagle Pass in 1974. But as the graph below shows, these namings were not evenly distributed across those decades.
This wave of schools adopting Lee’s name in Texas accelerated during a pivotal period in our nation’s history. Court battles challenging school segregation gained momentum in 1949, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
In the 84 years between Lee’s death and Brown, a Texas school adopted his name on average once every 10.5 years. In the 21 years between Brown and the last Texas school to adopt his name in 1974, that rate more than quadrupled: one every 28 months. This was part of a broader trend in the South in which naming public schools (many of which were still segregated at their naming) after Confederate leaders served as symbolic defiance of federal desegregation orders.1
While in many ways, Midland’s culture is not like places typically called “the South,” this Southern / Texas / Midland congruence is reflected in the Midland Reporter-Telegram’s two front-page headlines that addressed Brown on the day after the ruling, neither of which indicates any positive response. One refers to officials in Georgia who openly denounced the decision and vowed open defiance.2 The other focuses on how Texas senator (and soon-to-be governor), Price Daniel was disturbed and stated that Texas would keep its school system “despite the Supreme Court ruling.”3
This local reflection of statewide and regional resistance provides critical context for the series of events directly related to Lee High’s naming.
Timeline: How and When Lee Was Named
1881: Midland is founded as Midway Station with no direct Confederate history—after the Civil War and Robert E. Lee’s death.
May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court rules school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board.
August 26–27, 1956: At about 3:00 am on Sunday, August 26, two burning crosses are planted in yards on opposite sides of town. The next morning, one Black student enrolls in first grade at DeZavala Elementary, marking the beginning of MISD’s gradual desegregation plan, which involves integrating one grade per year.4
August 1957: A total of thirteen Black students are enrolled in a formerly segregated MISD school, all at DeZavala. Trustees express satisfaction with the slow pace.5
January 23, 1961: MISD board votes 4–2 to approve the name, Robert E. Lee High School.6
August 1961: Lee High opens as a segregated school.
May 1968: Carver High School (for Black students) is closed; those students are integrated into Lee and Midland High.
1970–1976: The U.S. Department of Justice sues MISD for maintaining racially dual systems in its elementary schools; the case advances to federal appeals court.7
1977: As a result of the suit, MISD implements full integration via a cluster plan.8
Reckoning with the Name
Many graduates of Lee High have gone on to live with admirable character and have made meaningful contributions to Midland and beyond. The school’s academic and athletic successes are part of its legacy. Acknowledging this, however, should not prevent us from asking hard questions about the historical moment in which the name was chosen, what it represented then, and the impact it had in the following decades.
In 2020, the MISD trustees made a courageous and compassionate decision to join other communities across Texas and the South in dropping names of Confederate leaders from public schools. This was a recognition that a school’s name and the context from which that naming happened have significant impact on students and the community.
A Current Trend to Avoid
A current trend may be emerging, as two schools in Virginia that dropped their Confederate names in 2020 have now reinstated them. In light of the prejudiced context described above, it would be a mistake for MISD’s board to ignore the full weight of our community’s history and follow the lead of the Virginia schools. Our community needs our trustees to consider the full context and lead us toward a better future.
Meredith P. Richards, et al., “The Persistence of Confederate, Enslaver, and Segregationist Namesakes in U.S. Public Schools: A Critical Quantitative Toponymic Analysis,” AERA Open 11, no 1 (2025): 2, https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584241309313.
“Georgians Hint Defiance On Supreme Court Ruling,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, May 18, 1954, 1.
“Race Issue Disturbs Daniel,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, May 18, 1954, 1.
Anntoinette Moore, “Events Listed in Midland Independent School District desegregation,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, July 4, 1985, 22EE.
Anntoinette Moore, “Events Listed in Midland Independent School District desegregation,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, July 4, 1985, 22EE.
“City High Schools Named Madison, Lee,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, January 24, 1961, 1. Curiously, Midland High was approved to be renamed as James Madison High School in the same meeting, but it never happened.
Anntoinette Moore, “Events Listed in Midland Independent School District desegregation,” Midland Reporter-Telegram, July 4, 1985, 22EE.
Jimmy Patterson, A History of Character: The Story of Midland, Texas (Abell-Hanger Foundation and Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, 2014), 141.
I really appreciate this article! Thank you for speaking up about what is happening. I hope that the citizens of Midland stand up and voice their opinion against reinstating the Confederate name.
As important as the timeline of when the naming came about, was how it affected the former Carver students who were forced to go to Lee. When it was built, it was quite a ways north of central Midland, and when it was named, everyone (especially the black community) understood that it was meant to be a school for only white students. When desegregation finally came about in Midland, and Carver students were integrated into Lee and MHS, the MHS kids teased the Lee kids incessantly about going across town to Lee where the confederate flag flew (a symbol used at the time by the KKK to scare blacks)and having to hear Dixie played every day.