The latest chapter in the country’s continuing reckoning with the legacy of the Confederacy is being written by grade school students.

A call to rename Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School, which was named after Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America, emerged not from protests or rallies, but from one student’s summer reading assignment. It grew into a participatory civics lesson, as students from kindergarten through fifth grade at the school, in Jackson, Miss., nominated new names, assembled PowerPoint presentations and, at the beginning of the month, cast ballots.

On Oct. 17, at a meeting of the Jackson Public Schools board of trustees, Janelle Jefferson, the president of the school’s PTA, announced that the school community had overwhelmingly voted to rename the school after President Barack Obama.

“If we are going to teach our kids a lesson, it’s this: If there’s something you feel strongly about that you feel needs to change, continue to agitate for it,” Ms. Jefferson said in an interview.