After several hours of meetings, the Shenandoah County Board of Education voted early Friday to restore the names of three Confederate officers to the county's schools.
The vote makes the district the first in the nation to restore Confederate names to schools that removed them after summer 2020, according to researchers at the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative. is.
The vote reversed a decision made four years ago, when the killing of George Floyd sparked calls for racial injustice across the country. During a virtual meeting in July 2020, during a summer of pandemic and protests, the board decided that two schools, Ashby Lee Elementary School and Stonewall Jackson High School, were incompatible with a recently passed resolution condemning racism. It voted 5-1 to remove the names. The following year, the school was renamed Honey Run and Mountain View.
But in a rural county in the mountains of Virginia, anger was being unleashed. People flocked to the school board meeting, accusing the name change of being secretive and rushed through with little notice, and expressing even deeper outrage over the cultural changes they saw as being imposed. .
The name change was kept after another vote in 2022 ended in a tie. But opponents vowed that Stonewall Jackson would come back. And on Friday, he was.
“When you read about this man, you see who he was and what he stood for, the character, the loyalty, the leadership, how godly a man he was. The standards he had were the same as the 2020 school system. It was much higher than any other leadership,'' said Tom Street, one of the board members. He and four of his five colleagues then voted to reinstate Jackson and the other names.
The county, which is more than 90% white, is not the only county to reverse decisions made in 2020. Across the country, many measures adopted in 2020 and 2021 have been scaled back or canceled, including a new curriculum on the nation's racial history. It has since been eliminated in the years since. Politicians slammed “critical race theory” and schools reinstated mascots condemned as racist. But until Friday, no one seemed to have brought home the Confederate namesake.
The school board's vote was not surprising. Many of the signs removed from Stonewall Jackson High School were stored in storage, waiting to be returned. All three board members who voted to keep the new name in 2022 decided not to run for re-election next year.
“We're burnt out,” said Marty Helsley, a 73-year-old farmer who served one term.
When the issue first arose in 2020, Helsley was the only vote against removing the Confederate name, asking the board to give it more time to decide. But he said he believes the district should move forward in 2022.
“They can't let it go,” Helsley said before Friday's vote. “Four years have passed! The Civil War lasted only four years!”
Three conservatives won vacant seats on the board in 2023, vowing, among other things, to rid schools of “woke leftist policies.” Although they did not specifically campaign for the name of the school, many residents were able to guess the school's location.
In April, a group calling itself the Coalition for Better Schools submitted a letter to the school board regarding the naming issue. The group conducted a survey in the area of the county served by both schools and found there was “overwhelming support for restoring” the name. There were questions about the reliability of these results. Less than one in seven recipients returned a completed survey. However, the board still agreed to take up the issue.
A large number of residents gathered in the middle school cafeteria Thursday night, and the board meeting continued until after midnight and included four hours of public comment.
Dozens of people opposed the restoration of the old name, including white county residents who say they are descendants of Confederate soldiers and black residents who were among the first to integrate local schools. was. Several speakers emphasized that Stonewall Jackson High School was named in 1959 during Virginia's “massive resistance” to integration. Some highlighted the irony of the meeting opening with a pledge of allegiance to the flag with which Mr. Jackson waged war.
“I think it's unfair that the name reinstatement is even a topic of discussion,” said the woman, whose mother was one of two black people in her class at what was then Stonewall Jackson High School, at least until Friday's vote. said Aliyah Ogle, 14, who was doing so. She was planning to attend that school next year too. Arya said Jackson died fighting for slavery. “If he had won, I wouldn't have been allowed to go to public school and I wouldn't be speaking here today.”
Those who want the old name restored have never seen the much-discussed racism at Stonewall-Jackson, and have never had their black classmates complain about it. he said repeatedly. The division in the community was brought on by the 2020 board vote, which he called unjust and part of a “woke movement” that “swept across the country like a dirty cancer.” The speakers claimed that the
“Some people find the school name offensive,” said Fred Neese, 69, a chicken farmer. “I'm angry that they're disparaging the good name of our ancestors. I'm angry that the previous board wasn't forthright with people.”
At around 11:30, the directors themselves began speaking about the issue one by one. Some decried identity politics, while others read prayers for healing.
The board chairman, a retired Army colonel, said America has far less racism and civil war than other parts of the world. Another Latinx member, the only minority on the board, said those who raise racism claims may be well-intentioned but “misled by those who seek divisiveness to strengthen their political ideology.” “There is,” he said.
But most of the board wants to do what a majority of the community seems to want: restore the Confederate name after deeming a decision four years ago flawed and undemocratic. said.
And just after midnight, they voted to put things back together.
