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Coordinates: 30°14′47″N 81°45′57″W 30.246475, -81.765713

Nathan Bedford Forrest High School

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    • Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America
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  • Official Website: [1]
• History & Memorable Moments

Nathan Bedford Forrest High School is a public high school in Jacksonville, Florida, located on the city's Westside. Forrest opened in 1959 in the Wesconnett neighborhood of Jacksonville, at the site of present-day J. E. B. Stuart Middle School. Forrest moved to its current location on Firestone Road in 1966. ^[1]

The school is named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general during the American Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. As of 2007, it is only one of two high schools named after Forrest, the other located in his hometown of Chapel Hill, Tennessee. When the school was to be opened in 1959, many Jacksonville organizations picked names for the new school, to be voted on at a school board meeting. After many ballots, "Nathan Bedford Forrest High School," picked by the Daughters of the Confederacy, won. ^[1]

From its opening in 1959 and throughout the 1960s, Forrest High School remained an all white school. Beginning in 1971, mandatory integration of Duval County Schools by federal district court order introduced a more diverse population. Currently, over 1800 students attend Forrest, 51% of whom are African American. ^[1]

In November 2006, the latest in a long line of petitions to change the name of the high school has been submitted to the Duval County School Board. Students from the Florida Community College at Jacksonville want to have the school renamed to after Eartha M. M. White, a Jacksonville native and philanthropist, due to Forrest's connection with the Ku Klux Klan. Other alternative names suggested in the past have included Scott Speicher High School, after the school's most famous alumnus, or simply, Forest High School. ^[1]

Like typical American high schools, Forrest fields sports teams in football, baseball, basketball, volleyball and wrestling, among others. The wrestling program is almost certainly the most successful sports program at the school, having one the Gateway Conference championship for the 19th time in 2007. The school mascot is the Confederate Rebel, modeled in appearance after Colonel Reb, the former mascot of the University of Mississippi. ^[1]

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