Ex-Dallas ISD trustee says Confederate statues should stay up or go to museum

Cities and states across the county are talking about whether statutes and monuments that stand to Confederate heroes should come down.

One former Dallas school leader who is black said the statues shouldn’t be thrown out, but rather left up or taken down and put in a museum.

“We should never try to whitewash our history and it’s so critical and so important that African American kids that are coming in the next couple of generations understand what happened to us here in the United States,” said former DISD board member Ron Price.

As a board member, Price pushed for the names of Jefferson Davis Elementary to be changed to Barbara Jordan and Colonial Elementary to be changed to Martin Luther King Elementary. Now he says the statutes stand to an ugly part of history - but are still part of U.S. history, nonetheless.

“It’s critical and important for the next generation to understand the struggle that we had here in the United States and understand that the struggle is not over,” Price said. “Don’t get it twisted that the statues are gone everything is great. The statutes disappear, that doesn’t make everything great.”

Price says it’s important people don’t forget what happened and pointed to what happened to Jews in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

“We have the Holocaust museums across the United States and around the world and it’s a constant reminder what happened to our brothers and sisters who are Jewish in the history of the world during World War II. It’s a constant reminder.”