A board of education in a rural area of the southeastern U.S. state of Virginia voted early Friday to restore the names of Confederate generals in the U.S. Civil War to two schools, removed four years ago at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
During a meeting that began Thursday evening and extended past midnight, the Shenandoah County school board voted 5-1 to restore the original names of the schools: Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School, named after Confederate military leaders Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee.
In 2020, like many other school districts across the state and country, Shenandoah County voted to remove the names of Confederate leaders from schools and other public places. The death of George Floyd, a Black man, while in police custody and similar incidents at the time nationally — and even internationally — led to a reckoning in the country about race.
The Washington Post, citing an analysis by Education Week newspaper, reported that Virginia in 2020 had the second-highest number of schools — 24 — named for men with links to the Confederacy. The state capital, Richmond, was once the capital of the Confederacy.
With its vote, the school board in Shenendoah County, a rural, conservative, majority-white area about 160 km (99 miles) west of Washington, D.C., is believed to be the first U.S. school district to restore Confederate names.
While there had always been vocal opposition to the name change — a vote to restore the names in 2022 ended in a tie — Thursday’s vote was inspired by a letter to the school board from a group called the Coalition for Better Schools that said renaming the schools was “essential to honor our community’s heritage.”
The group said the legacy of the Confederate military leaders was an important part of the community’s local history and called them “heroes.” It said it had surveyed locals who overwhelmingly supported restoring the names.
The 5-1 vote — the board’s vice chairman cast the only no vote — came after hours of public comment from people speaking on both sides of the issue.
Proponents of restoring the names argued the name changes were a “knee-jerk” reaction, and that Confederate monuments and place names honored the traditions and history of the southern United States.
Opponents argued monuments to the Confederacy honor a racist ideology that sought to end the United States for the sake of preserving slavery.
Under the vote’s conditions, only private funds can be used for the tasks involved in renaming the schools, such as changing signage and uniforms for athletic squads.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
