Virginia school district restores Confederate names at 2 schools

(NewsNation) — A school board in rural Virginia voted to reinstate the names of Confederate generals for two schools four years after the names had been removed, making it the first district in the nation to reverse course after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

On Friday, 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.

The reversal had been expected as many residents of the more than 90% white county said the previous school hastily changed the names of the Confederate generals and ignored popular sentiment and due process when the names were stripped in 2020, reported The New York Times.

“When you read about this man — who he was, what he stood for, his character, his loyalty, his leadership, how Godly a man he was — those standards that he had were much higher than any leadership of the school system in 2020,” said Tom Streett, one the board members who voted for the reinstatement, the outlet reported.

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Districts across the South removed Confederate names from schools in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. With this reversal, Shenandoah became the first to change course.

The district had initially voted to remove the names, saying that they were inappropriate in light of a recently passed resolution condemning racism.

While it is the first to restore Confederate-era names, the move appears to follow a larger trend of reversing course after the racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd.

School curriculums on Black history and slavery have been diluted and even removed in several states, and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have been pulled back on campuses and in businesses, among other moves.

Shenandoah County board member Gloria Carlineo said that opponents of the Confederate names should “stop bringing racism and prejudice into everything” because it “detracts from true cases of racism.”

Kyle Gutshall, who was the only board member to vote against reinstating the names, said he respects both sides of the debate but believed that a majority of residents in his district wanted to leave the Mountain View and Honey Run names in place.

Private donations will be used to pay for the name changes, according to the resolution.

Shenandoah County is a largely rural jurisdiction with a population of about 45,000, roughly 100 miles west of the nation’s capital.

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After the national racial reckoning in 2020, several schools, military bases and landmarks removed Confederate-era names, which are largely associated with slavery and racial inequality.

Since June 29, 2020, more than 35 Confederate-named schools have changed names, 24 of which were located in Texas or Virginia, according to Education Week.

In Richmond, Virginia, about 160 miles southeast of Shenandoah, several schools were renamed last year.

George Wythe High School, John B. Cary Elementary, Ginter Park Elementary and Binford Middle School were all renamed, WRIC reported.

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Virginia’s largest school system, Fairfax County Public Schools, removed the name of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from one of its high schools in 2020 in favor of the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, reported Education Week.

But around 190 schools in 19 states still bear the names of men with ties to the Confederacy.

The Army commission recommended new names for nine military bases commemorating Confederate officers, including the head of its army, the reputed Georgia chief of the Ku Klux Klan and the commander whose troops fired the first shots of the Civil War, reported Time.

At least 200 memorials named after Confederate-era figures have also been removed since 2020, including at least 73 Confederate monuments, according to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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