ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City Public School (ACPS) board voted unanimously Thursday evening to change the name of T.C. Williams High School to Alexandria City High School.
Additionally, the school board voted unanimously to also change the name of Matthew Maury Elementary School to 'Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School.' Naomi Lewis Brooks was an Alexandria resident, educator and mother.
Brooks passed away on May 21, 2020.
"It's official! The School Board has voted and the new school name for T.C. Williams High School is 'Alexandria City High School," the school district wrote in a tweet Thursday evening.
The new names for both schools will go into effect at the start of the 2021-22 school year on Jul. 1, 2021.
T.C. Williams High School, made famous by the Disney movie "Remember the Titans", was voted back in November to be renamed after a 9-0 school board vote by Alexandria Public Schools.
The man for whom T.C. Williams High School is named, Thomas Chambliss Williams, was a segregationist who was the superintendent of Alexandria city schools for 30 years. He was very outspoken about his beliefs to keep black students and white students in separate schools.
Last year's vote came after a petition to the Alexandria City School Board to change the name that was started at the beginning of 2020.
T.C. Williams High School is best known for its depiction in "Remember the Titans" starring Denzel Washington. Based on the true story of football coach Herman Boone -- who passed away in 2019 -- it portrays Boone's efforts to integrate the T.C. Williams High School football team back in 1971.
In 2004, when residents tried to change the name, one of the reasons it was not changed was out of fear that the famed 1971 Titans football team would be forgotten.
"You can ‘Remember the Titans’ without honoring TC Williams," Alexandria resident Marc Solomon said back in June. "The movie wasn’t called ‘Remember TC Williams.'"
Solomon started a petition to rename the high school for a simple reason.
“I haven’t found one person who can say one nice thing about T.C. Williams the man," Solomon told WUSA9 in November. "I have never met one person who can say one positive thing about him, which is weird. I mean folks find reasons to keep names of other places and I can’t find one."
T.C. Williams was the superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools from the mid-1930s to mid-1960s and was opposed to desegregation in schools, refusing to allow black students to learn alongside their white neighbors.