US school to be named after Obama

A public school in Mississippi is to drop the name of the Civil War leader of the pro-slavery South and be named after the first black US president, Barack Obama, the local newspaper reported.

The move in Jackson, Mississippi, comes amid a national debate over a campaign to remove statues and other monuments to generals and leaders of the 1861-1865 Confederacy.

The Clarion-Ledger said Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School, whose enrollment is 98 percent black, will be renamed Barack Obama Magnet International Baccalaureate Elementary School next year.

Janelle Jefferson, head of the parent-teacher association, informed the Jackson school board of the plan to rename the school at a meeting on Tuesday evening, the newspaper said.

"Jefferson Davis, although infamous in his own right, would probably not be too happy about a diverse school promoting the education of the very individuals he fought to keep enslaved being named after him," Jefferson told the board.