A Step Backwards: Shenandoah County's Return to Confederate Worship
Retro Review: Bonus Free Newsletter 5/20/24
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I wish I could say I was surprised when I read this headline.
Virginia school board restores Confederate leaders’ names to two schools
Unfortunately, I was absolutely not.
The schools in question, Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School in Shenandoah County, Virginia only had their names changed 4 years ago, during the summer that followed the George Floyd protests.
For one brief shining moment, people actually, seemed to give a shit about not naming schools after people who went to war over their “right” to enslave people of a different race.
But in 2024 Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School are back.
So since this is the Retro Review, let’s put this controversial renaming into context.
The History Behind the Schools
Stonewall Jackson High School
Stonewall Jackson High School, now again bearing the name of the famous Confederate general, was originally named to honor Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a key figure in the Civil War. Born in 1824 in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia), Jackson earned his nickname "Stonewall" during the First Battle of Bull Run, where his steadfastness in battle impressed his fellow Confederates.
Jackson also owned slaves. At least six of which we know the names of. Albert, Amy, Hetty, Cyrus, George, and Emma…an orphaned four-year-old he bought as a gift to his wife, planning to raise and train her as a personal attendant for the woman. How thoughful.
You might think that the school was built sometime in the late 1800s, maybe the early 1900s, but no…it was in fact opened in 1960, six years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision made segregation in schools illegal. Why is that important? Oh probably because Stonewall Jackson High School was, despite this timing, opened as a SEGREGATED school.
A segregated school, flying in the face of a Supreme Court ruling, and they just happen to name themselves after a man who owned slaves and fought to defend the “state’s right” to make certain people property. Yeah, we all get what they were doing.
Ashby-Lee Elementary School
With Ashby-Lee Elementary we get a two-for-one special. The school is named after a combination of Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate State’s Army, and Turner Ashby, a cavalry commander known for exploits in the Shenandoah Valley.
Robert E. Lee himself owned slaves and was overseer to many more on the Arlington House property he inherited from his father-in-law. He was tasked with freeing the slaves at Arlington house after five years, but he actually tried to get the state of Virginia to allow him to keep them enslaved longer than that. He was also apparently a rather harsh overseer.
He was also an avowed white supremacist in the years after the Civil War. He argued against the enfranchisement of former slaves because he thought that they were incapable of being good citizens. He supported the efforts of white Southerners to keep black people in a subordinate position.
Turner Ashby is another interesting figure. In 1856 he led a violent pro-slavery mob in an attack against John C. Underwood, of Clarke County, Virginia. Underwood was an anti-slavery man who spoke at the Republican Party’s convention in Philadelphia that year. Ashby threatened to coat Underwood in tar and told him if he didn’t leave town soon, force would be used to make him leave.
Underwood left.
Underwood, by the way, publicly endorsed African American suffrage and full citizenship rights for freedpeople after the war and at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868, he argued that not only should African-Americans be granted suffrage, but that women should receive it too.
Somehow it kind of feels like maybe there should be a John C. Underwood elementary school, more than one named after Ashby…especially since Underwood actually gave a shit about education.
But back to Ashby, who was killed in a skirmish in 1862. After his death, Ashby would be dubbed the “Black Knight of the Confederacy,” which, for all of my football fan readers (I’m sure you exist) might sound familiar. That would be because, unfortunately, The Army Black Knights is the official name of the athletic teams that represent the United States Military Academy, located in West Point, New York.
They claim the name is because of their black uniforms, but I can’t be the only one a little uncomfortable with the name of the West Point athletic teams being essentially an homage to a Confederate hero, right?
Were the names actually about honoring Confederates? Or were they subtle threats to keep African Americans in “their place”?
Two things can be true at the same time. But it’s not a coincidence that the motherload of these monuments to confederacy came during the Jim Crow Era or that the next uptick we see, especially in the naming of schools, is directly after the 1954 Brown v. Board decision and well into the rest of the Civil Rights movement.
The naming of these schools was part and parcel of Massive Resistance, the Southern policy proposed by Harry F. Byrd, Sr. of Virginia.
On February 25, 1956, he called for what became known as Massive Resistance. This was a group of laws, passed in 1956, intended to prevent integration of the schools. A Pupil Placement Board was created with the power to assign specific students to particular schools. Tuition grants were to be provided to students who opposed integrated schools. The linchpin of Massive Resistance was a law that cut off state funds and closed any public school that attempted to integrate.
In addition to legal and legislative resistance, the white population of the southern United States mobilized en masse to nullify the Supreme Court’s decree. In states across the South, whites set up private academies to educate their children, at first using public funds to support the attendance of their children in these segregated facilities, until the use of public funds was successfully challenged in court. In other instances, segregationists tried to intimidate black families by threats of violence and economic reprisals against plaintiffs in local cases.
Make no mistake, the choice to name those schools those names had nothing to do with “Southern Heritage” unless white Southerners are now just admitting that “Southern Heritage” is a dog whistle for racism.
Reversing the name change during a period when racial tensions are incredibly high, and groups like Moms for Liberty and schools across Southern states are actively trying to rewrite or erase the history of racism and slavery in this country. Banning books like This is Your Time by Ruby Bridges (or the Disney Ruby Bridges movie) or pushing for curriculum to teach the same lies that the United Daughters of the Confederacy spewed, that slavery was actually “beneficial” to slaves or that some slave owners were kind and their slaves well-treated and happy.
By renaming those schools, they are celebrating a history of racism in the United States that stretches far beyond the lives of the three men they are “honoring” and saying the quiet part out loud about what they think the world should look like.
And we can’t let them get what they want.
For more information on this topic, check out this podcast episode from last August and subscribe to the podcast to keep an eye out for the episode I’m working on about the history of school choice.