School in UK city of Bristol to ditch slave trader's name

LONDON (AP) — First his statue met a watery end during last year's Black Lives Matter protests. Now another school in southwest England named after the slave trader Edward Colston is changing its name.

The governors of Colston’s School, which was set up in 1710 in Bristol, said Monday that the private school will be renamed next summer with current and former students, parents and staff all to have a say.

They said the events that took place during the protests in Bristol in June 2020, which saw the toppling of Colston's statue in the city, prompted renewed questions about keeping his name at locations across the city.

"What became clear is that the name Colston has become a symbol of the city’s extensive links to slavery and will forever be associated with the enslavement and deaths of African men, women and children," it said.

Colston, who was born in 1636 to a wealthy merchant family, became prominently involved in England’s sole official slaving company at the time, the Royal African Company, and Bristol was at the heart of it.

The company transported tens of thousands of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean, mainly to work the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and cultivate the tobacco fields that were burgeoning in the new colony of Virginia.

Bristol, as an international port, was at the center of the slave trade and benefited hugely financially — not just by shipbuilders and slavers, but also investors like Colston, who would buy a stake in the triangular slave voyage between England, West Africa and the Caribbean.

Colston gave a lot of money to local charities and that helps explain why his name has donned so many public buildings in the city, including educational and economic institutions. In November 2020, Colston’s Girls’ School in Bristol announced it...