The education board for a rural Virginia county voted early on Friday to restore the names of Confederate generals stripped from two schools in 2020, making the mostly white, Republican district the first in the U.S. to take such an action.

By a 5-1 vote, the Shenandoah County board overturned its 2020 decision that stripped a public high school and elementary school of their original names honoring three military leaders of the pro-slavery South in the Civil War.

Under the board’s action, Mountain View High School will again become known as Stonewall Jackson High, while Honey Run Elementary School will revert to the name Ashby Lee Elementary.

The names belong to some of the most well-known military leaders of the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee was commander of the Army of Northern Virginia; Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a Confederate infantry general, and Turner Ashby was a rebel cavalry commander. All of them were Virginians.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    If anyone is curious about the “states rights” that the south went to war over, please read the declarations of causes given when they seceded.

    https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

    They all say they want slaves, and they all say it right at the top.

    Example: Mississippi, sentence two:

    Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun

    We don’t how to guess about what their reasons for secession were. They told us, in writing.