A Virginia school board voted Friday to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a middle school and an elementary school, four years after the names were removed amid nationwide protests calling for a reckoning with racial injustice.
In a change that experts believe was the first of its kind, the Shenandoah County school board voted 5-1 to rename Mountain View High School as Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary as Ashby Lee Elementary.
Friday's vote reversed a school board decision in 2020 when school systems in Virginia and the South they were removing Confederate names of schools and other public places in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which maintains a database of more than 2,000 Confederate monuments across the country, is not aware of another case of restoration of a Confederate name that was removed, said senior analyst Rivka Maizlish.
Overall, the trend of removing Confederate names and monuments has continued, even if it has slowed somewhat since 2020, he said, noting that the Army renamed nine installations named after Confederate leaders and removed a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.
In Virginia, local governments had banned the withdrawal Confederate monuments and statues until the law was changed in 2020, although the statute did not apply to school names.
On Friday, school board members who voted to restore Confederate names said the previous board ignored popular sentiment and due process when the names were removed.
The 2023 election significantly changed the makeup of the school board, with one board member writing in an article for the Northern Virginia Daily that the results gave Shenandoah County “the first 100 percent conservative board in as long as anyone can remember “.
That board member, Gloria Carlineo, said during the six-hour meeting that began Thursday night that opponents of Confederate names should “stop bringing racism and prejudice into everything” because it “takes away the real cases of racism”.
The only board member to vote against restoring the Confederate names, Kyle Gutshall, said he respected both sides of the debate, but believed the majority of residents in his district wanted to keep the names Mountain View and Honey Run in place.
“I don't judge anyone or look down on anyone for the decision they're making,” he said. “It's a complex issue.”
During several hours of public comment, county residents spoke on both sides of the issue.
Beth Ogle, a longtime resident with children in the school system, said restoring Confederate names is “a statement to the world that you do not value the dignity and respect of your minority students, faculty and staff.”
Kenny Wakeman, a lifelong county resident, said the Stonewall Jackson name “was proud for 60 years until 2020,” when he said the “actions of a rogue police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota “, sparked a movement to change the name, a reference. to Floyd's killing that spurred nationwide protests and debates about racial injustice.
Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was a Confederate general from Virginia who rose to fame at the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas in 1861 and died in 1863 after being shot and having his arm amputated. Jackson's name was also removed from another high school in Prince William County, Virginia in 2020 that is now known as Unity Reed High School.
Ashby Lee is named for General Robert E. Lee, a native Virginian who commanded Confederate forces, and Turner Ashby, a Confederate cavalry officer who was killed in battle in 1862 near Harrisonburg, Virginia. A high school near Harrisonburg is also named after Ashby.
The resolution approved by the school board states that private donations would be used to pay for the name changes.
Shenandoah County, a largely rural jurisdiction with a population of about 45,000 about 100 miles west of the nation's capital, has long been politically conservative. In 2020, then-President Donald Trump won 70% of the presidential vote in Shenandoah, although President Biden won Virginia by 10 points.
In Virginia, local governments were barred from removing Confederate monuments and statues until the 2020 law lifted those restrictions. Statues of Confederate leaders, including Lee, Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were removed from Richmond's famous Monument Avenue in 2020 and 2021 after protests and vandalism of the statues.
Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Maizlish of the Southern Poverty Law Center said it's unusual, though not unprecedented, for conservative jurisdictions like Shenandoah to have removed Confederate names in the first place.
She said that while there is no evidence that other jurisdictions have restored Confederate names or monuments, she is “always concerned about the people who are working to continue to promote the propaganda of the lost cause.”
