A Cambridge middle school removed Agassiz’s name in 2002

Evidence

Charles Ogletree, a law professor at Harvard, however, responded with an action plan. I had written to him on March 11, 2011, and shared my story. He wrote me back the next day and copied several people, some with Harvard.edu addresses, and one for the Cambridge branch of the NAACP, with the note, “I’m connecting you with some Cambridge sources and friends who know the Agassiz story.” He also mentioned that there was a middle school in Cambridge originally named for Agassiz that had his name removed in February 2002 and was now called the Maria Baldwin Middle School, after the woman who was appointed principal of Agassiz Middle School in 1899—the first Black female to hold that position in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the entire Northeast. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 287

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader renamings and commemoration-removal theme readers follow across Harvard history and Black memory studies.