Michelle Obama could soon have a school named for her in Clayton County, where her great-great-great-grandmother once labored as a slave.
A proposal to rename South Clayton Elementary School for the former first lady fell a vote short at Monday’s school board meeting — with four members wanting to name the school after Obama and four seeking to bestow the honor on the late Atlanta Congressman John Lewis.
Melvinia Shields, Obama’s great-great-great-grandmother, was enslaved before the Civil War on a family farm in Rex, a tiny hamlet in Clayton County.
Melvinia came to the area when she was six, far from her home in South Carolina. She labored at a time when life was hard and the work unremitting, Gene Hatfield, a retired history professor at Clayton State University, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2018.
Shields' link to Obama was made through her biracial son Dolphus Shields by genealogists contracted by the New York Times.
“She actually does have some lineage to Clayton County,” board chairwoman Jessie Goree said of Obama at the meeting.
Only eight board members were in attendance at Monday’s virtual meeting. With the vote split between Obama and Lewis, who died in July, the name change was tabled until the next meeting.
Board member Ophelia Burroughs, who was absent, sent a text message voting for the former first lady during the meeting.
“She would be the tie-breaker,” Goree said, holding up her phone to show the text message.
But Clem Doyle, the district’s attorney, said Burroughs would need to be physically present for her vote to count.
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