In reversal, Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to 2 schools

FALLS CHURCH, Va. —  A Virginia school board has voted to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a high school and an elementary school four years after the names were removed amid nationwide protests calling for a reckoning over racial injustice.

In a reversal that experts believe was the first of its kind, Shenandoah County’s school board on Friday voted 5 to 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 decision by the board in 2020 when school systems across Virginia and the South were removing Confederate names from schools and other public locations 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 memorials nationwide, is not aware of another case of a school system restoring a Confederate name that was removed, senior research analyst Rivka Maizlish said.

Overall, the trend toward removal of Confederate names and memorials has continued, even if it has slowed since 2020, she said, noting that the Army renamed nine installations that had been named for Confederate leaders and removed a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.

In Virginia, local governments had been banned from removing Confederate memorials and statues until the law was changed in 2020, though the statute did not apply to school names.

On Friday, school board members who voted to restore the Confederate names said the previous board ignored popular sentiment. Elections in 2023 significantly changed the board’s makeup, with one member writing in an op-ed for the Northern Virginia Daily that the results gave Shenandoah County “the first 100% conservative board since anyone can remember.”

That member, Gloria Carlineo, said during a six-hour meeting that began Thursday night that opponents of the Confederate names should “stop bringing racism and prejudice into everything” because it “detracts from true cases of racism.”

The lone member to vote against restoring the Confederate names, Kyle Gutshall, said he respected both sides of the debate but believed a majority of residents in his district wanted to leave the Mountain View and Honey Run names in place.

During several hours of public comment, residents spoke up on both sides of the issue.

Beth Ogle, who has children in the school system, said restoring the 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 said the Stonewall Jackson name “stood proudly for 60 years until 2020,” when he said the “actions of a rogue police officer in Minneapolis, Minn.,” prompted a move to change the name, a reference to the killing of George Floyd that propelled nationwide protests and debate over racial injustice.

Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was a Confederate general from Virginia who gained fame at the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas in 1861 and died in 1863 after he was shot.

Ashby Lee is named for Gen. Robert E. Lee, a Virginia native who commanded Confederate forces, and for Turner Ashby, a Confederate cavalry officer who was killed in battle in 1862 near Harrisonburg, Va.

Shenandoah County, a largely rural jurisdiction with a population of about 45,000, roughly 100 miles west of the nation’s capital, has long been politically conservative. In 2020, Donald Trump won 70% of the presidential vote in there, even as Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 percentage points.

Maizlish said it’s unusual, though not unprecedented, that conservative jurisdictions such as Shenandoah removed Confederate names in the first place. She said she is “always concerned about people who work to continue to promote Lost Cause propaganda.”

Barakat writes for the Associated Press.