Virginia school board restores Confederate leaders’ names to two schools

Four years after removing the names of Confederate leaders from two schools, a Virginia school board has decided to reverse that decision.

In a 5-1 vote Friday, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to restore Mountain View High School’s name to Stonewall Jackson High School, and Honey Run Elementary School to Ashby-Lee Elementary School. In addition to Jackson, the restored names honor Confederate officers Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.

Thomas Streett, a board member who supported the reversal, called the board’s vote in 2020 — under different membership — a “knee-jerk reaction” and praised Jackson’s values. Approximately 80 people spoke at the meeting, with more than 50 opposed to reversing the names, NBC News reported.

The racial reckoning that came in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 led to a cascade of changes — and promises — across the country. Companies publicly committed to hiring more people of color and pledged to do better by their Black employees; CEOs made dramatic gestures to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters; and industries scrambled to expand their efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.

Institutions across the South also dismantled monuments honoring Confederate leaders and removed their names from buildings and schools. The decision in Virginia appears to be the first such reversal by a school board. (The same board had tried to do so in 2022, but that effort failed.) The move also follows a nationwide pattern of conservatives pushing back against efforts to make workplaces, schools, libraries and athletics more inclusive and equitable spaces.