In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a school board in northern Virginia stripped the names of Confederate military figures from two schools. Four years later, the board approved a motion to restore the names.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a school board in northern Virginia stripped the names of Confederate military figures from two schools. Four years later, the board approved a motion to restore the names.

The school board in Shenandoah County, Virginia, early Friday approved a proposal that will restore the names of Confederate military leaders to two public schools.

The measure, which passed 5-1, reverses a previous board’s decision in 2020 to change the names of schools that had been linked to Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby, three men who led the pro-slavery Southern states during the Civil War.

Mountain View High School will go back to the name Stonewall Jackson High School. Honey Run Elementary School will go back to the name Ashby-Lee Elementary School.

The board stripped their names after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, fueling a national racial reckoning. The calls for racial justice and equity inspired some communities to remove Confederate symbolism and statues of Confederate generals.

But in Shenandoah County, the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools petitioned school officials to reinstate the names of Jackson, Lee and Ashby. “We believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority,” the coalition wrote in an April 3 letter to the board, according to a copy posted online.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      72·
      8 months ago

      That’s a thought.

      checks

      I mean, same general region, northern Virginia, but not really his place of birth. Something like a hundred miles away.

      It sounds like he was one of a number of people who got appointed via political connections.

      I’d think that if one wanted to choose a Confederate military leader who did well, there’d be a lot of better choices. Like, the North-South division ran right next to Washington, DC, due to the Maryland/Virginia split, Richmond wasn’t that far away, and so northern Virginia was the location of a lot of important Civil War stuff and my impression is that generally, Confederate forces in the east performed better than those in the west. So one would think that the northern Virginia region would have a lot of prominent options.

      If you wanted to pick a Confederate cavalry commander, I’d think that I’d pick someone like J. E. B. Stuart, who really did outperform.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._E._B._Stuart

      Like his intimate friend, Stonewall Jackson, General J. E. B. Stuart was a legendary figure and is considered one of the greatest cavalry commanders in American history. His friend from his federal army days, Union Major General John Sedgwick, said that Stuart was “the greatest cavalry officer ever foaled in America.”[83]