A Brooklyn elementary school’s five-year journey to shed a name tied to slavery culminated on Monday with the unveiling of a sign officially renaming P.S. 9 the Sarah Smith Garnet School.
It replaced a sign featuring the name of Teunis G. Bergen, scion of a slave-holding family that made its fortune going back to the 17th century off the backs of its human property on the land then known as Breukelen.
P.S. 9 has been named after Garnet since Feb. 2019, when the school’s parent-teacher organization voted unanimously to rename the Underhill Avenue elementary school after the first Black woman to serve as a public school principal in the city.
