The Oldest Elementary School In Salt Lake City, UT Will Be Renamed After First Black Female NASA Engineer

Photo by Bob Nye/NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

The oldest elementary school in Salt Lake City, Utah is going to undergo a name change to honor the first black woman to work as a NASA engineer. It has been reported that Jackson Elementary School, which is named after past president and slave owner Andrew Jackson, will now be named after mathematician Mary W. Jackson, who was portrayed by Janelle Monae in Hidden Figures.

“We just thought it would be good to have a school that honored somebody I could tell my children to look up to,” Neal Patwari, chair of the school’s community council, told the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Out of 184 parents, 73 percent of them were all far changing the name of the school. The decision was passed unanimously by the school board last week to rename the school to the Mary Jackson Elementary School. Out of the 238 votes submitted to the renaming committee, 61 percent of the voters chose Mary Jackson as the new namesake.

The renaming ceremony will be in October.