JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- A Florida school board has voted to keep the name of a Confederate general and early leader of the Ku Klux Klan on one of its high schools.

Members of the Duval County Board of Education dismissed the controversy over having a Jacksonville school named after Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and said the community's energy would be better spent helping the district improve its dismal academic record, the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union said Tuesday.


"The children didn't ask anybody to change the name of their school; the children asked for help to read and write," board member Vicki Drake said prior to Monday's 5-2 vote to keep Forrest High as is.

The two dissenting votes were cast by the board's two African-American members, who agreed with critics who said it was time to change the name that had been applied in 1958 as a rebuke of the Supreme Court's ruling banning school segregation.

The newspaper said the board heard more than two hours of public testimony, including statements that said Forrest's early association with the Klan was a bad rap, and that the ex-general had actually become a proponent of civil rights during Reconstruction.