Flint Poet Laureate Semaj Brown Calls for Renaming Detroit's Cass Technical High School

Michigan Public Radio amplifies the sentiments of Flint's first poet laureate, Semaj Brown, who argues that it's time that the city's technical high school, named after Michigan politician Lewis Cass, be renamed to honor a more just and deserving public figure. "Cass was a former territorial governor and U.S. senator. He was also a slave owner, a proponent of letting states decide whether to allow slavery, and a key architect behind atrocities committed against Native Americans, including the Trail of Tears and the Trail of Death," writes Michigan NPR program, Stateside. From Semaj Brown's essay: 

If you are a graduate of Cass Tech, as I am, then you are a supposed enlightened thinker, certainly not a vestige of the past. You are one who has the capacity to redefine our reality. We CT grads are charged with the responsibility to innovate. Part of being a social sculpturer is to embrace a social consciousness. To endure the hard swallow of loss and the tough triumph of transformation is the carving of history forward.

Continue reading (and listen to Brown read from the essay) at Stateside.