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.
“It’s not hate, it’s heritage!” The literal words said to my Asian wife driving through Virginia with her friend and their cousins seeing confederate flags painted on barn roofs. And yeah, it’s a heritage of fucking pro-slavery. It’s like when people say it was about economic policy…Well yeah, the Confederate economy was built on Slavery, so you’re not wrong…but still not in the way you think you’re right.
Never forget that ever state that seceded listed slavery, specifically superiority over black people as the reason for secession, codified slavery into law, and the CSA had a federal law stating that no state within the Confederacy could ever be allowed to become a free state.
Kinda puts a damper on the “states rights” argument.
Funny how their entire heritage is based around a bunch of guys who committed treason and only existed for 4-5 years over 150 years ago.