By Joseph Williams
Word In Black
Photo: AP Photo/Steve Helber
In 2020, when millions of people worldwide took to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd, a small school district in northwestern Virginia — an area that gave safe haven to Confederate forces during the Civil War — quietly stripped the names of 3 rebel commanders from two of its public schools.
But the Shenandoah County School Board’s low-key act of racial justice, made in a virtual meeting during the COVID-19 lockdown, triggered an intense backlash. A coalition of White parents and residents, angry at what they saw as a disrespectful move made without public input, launched a four-year campaign to reverse it.
Last week, they succeeded.
In the first action of its kind, the board voted 5-1 to re-rename a high school for Stonewall Jackson and return the names of Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby to one of the district’s elementary schools. Despite substantial opposition, the board said it was correcting the previous board’s “knee-jerk reaction” to public protests about Floyd’s murder.
Board member Gloria E. Carlineo told CNN that race wasn’t a factor in their decision; rather, the board, she said, acted to restore residents’ trust. “Wrongful actions by governmental systems can and should be rectified” through official channels, she said.
But experts say the school board’s decision — along with right-wing discrediting of DEI programs, new state laws restricting classroom lessons on Black history and the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision gutting affirmative action programs in college admissions — is another sign that the Great Racial Reckoning of 2020 is probably over.
Not forgotten or forgiven
“It’s deeply disturbing to me to hear that they reverted to names that present symbolic violence to a large swath of the American public,” says Gregg Suzannah Ferguson, an educator, anti-bias trainer and director of Hampton University’s Upward Bound program. “I am very saddened that we have to fight again (against) unconscious bias hiding in plain sight.”
The Confederate names were stripped from Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School back in July 2020, renaming them Mountain View High and Honey Run Elementary. The community was shut down due to the pandemic at the time, but protests erupted after a police officer killed Floyd in Minneapolis a few months earlier.
At a virtual meeting, the board voted to drop the names, declaring they were in conflict with a recently passed resolution condemning all forms of racism. The county’s population is 78 percent White and just 6 percent Black.
The reaction was swift and enduring. Outraged residents condemned the switch as a back-door move borne from political correctness — and with next to no public notice. A revote on the in 2022 ended in a tie, allowing the name changes to stand, but it became a hot-button issue in subsequent school board elections.
Located about 60 miles from Washington, D.C., near the West Virginia state line, the Shenandoah Valley established itself as a pro-slavery stronghold and saw significant fighting during the Civil War. Supporters of the restored names pointed to that history, arguing that Lee, Jackson, and Ashby were men of bravery and honor.
But opponents said the Confederate commanders were fighting for slavery and Black oppression — and lost. They also pointed out that the painful history of Shenandoah County’s segregated public schools wasn’t that long ago, and erasing those names is a step towards reconciliation.
Indeed, even in 2024, Black residents of Shenandoah County often have to drive past Confederate flags flying from businesses and front porches. Many of those who fly the banner defend it as a celebration of heritage, not a racist symbol of hatred.
Pride for some, pain for others
Ferguson — a former classroom teacher at Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Charleston, West Virginia — says the name change and reversal in Shenandoah County is an equal protection and safety issue. In 2019, she studied the effect schools named after Confederate figures and White supremacists have on Black teachers and students.
For them, the schools represent “a symbolic trifecta for White supremacy,” Ferguson wrote. “These names amplify racial inequities in society, the opportunity gap for black and Latinx populations, and the White privilege that allows many educators to remain oblivious to the suffering of students and colleagues of color.”
By using those names, school systems and elected officials “are tacitly endorsing the White supremacist agenda that sustained American slavery and continues to deprive students and educators of the respect and dignity they deserve,” she wrote. Teachers and students in those schools, she wrote, experience microaggressions and emotional trauma every time they walk into a building, earn a diploma, or put on a sports uniform with “Stonewall Jackson” or “Robert E. Lee” written on it.
“I’m a Black person. I don’t understand White people in this sense,” Ferguson says. “I’m not gonna say it’s a moral deficit, but there is some faulty logic somewhere causing people to believe that the suffering of others in the society in which we live — and the context in which we evolved as a society — has nothing to do with the now.”
This article was originally published by Word in Black.
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