WHYY By Philadelphia’s school buildings are a tribute to its past. That’s true of the structures themselves, some of which date back over a century. But it’s also a nod to the people commemorated in the names of those school buildings. Those names — in ways big and small — help tell the city’s history. The vast majority of public schools in the city are named after white men. (The school-namers of yore were partial to Union Civil War soldiers and former school board officials.) Still, in a city that didn’t have a statue of a Black person on public land until 2017, school buildings are among the rare public spaces with any echo of Philadelphia’s Black history.