Shenandoah County, Virginia’s ‘100% Conservative’ School Board Votes To Restore Names Of Confederate Leaders To Two Schools

A Shenandoah County, Virginia school board voted to restore the names of Confederate military leaders to a high school and an elementary school.

The vote occurred four years after they were removed during nationwide protests demanding a reckoning over racial injustice. In Virginia, local governments were banned from removing Confederate memorials and statues until the law was changed in 2020 after police killed George Floyd in 2020. 

Statues of Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee, Andrew Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were removed from Richmond’s famed Monument Avenue in 2020 and 2021 after protests and vandalizing of these statues.

Shenandoah County is one of the most politically conservative counties in the state.

In a reversal experts think was the first of its kind, Shenandoah County’s school board voted 5-1 to rename Mountain View High School, Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary Ashby Lee Elementary.

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

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

The resolution approved by the school board mentions that private donations would be used to pay for the name changes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which has a database of over 2,000 Confederate memorials nationwide, is unaware of another case of a school system restoring a Confederate name that was removed.

The trend toward the removal of Confederate names and memorials proceeded, even if it slowed somewhat, since 2020. 

The Army renamed nine installations named for Confederate leaders and also removed a Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.

Elections in 2023 drastically changed the school board’s makeup, with one board member, Gloria Carlineo, writing in an op-ed for the Northern Virginia Daily that the results had given Shenandoah County “the first 100% conservative board since anyone can remember.”

During the six-hour meeting, Carlineo stated that opponents of the Confederate names should “stop bringing racism and prejudice into everything” because it “detracts from true cases of racism.”

Kyle Gutshall, the only board member who voted against restoring these names, declared that he respected both sides of this debate but felt that most residents in his district wanted the Mountain View and Honey Run names to remain in place.

“I don’t judge anybody or look down on anybody for the decision they’re making,” Gutshall stated. “It’s a complex issue.”

Supporters of this vote claimed that the removal of the Confederate figures’ names in 2020 had been a “knee-jerk” response to protests following Floyd’s murder.

In 2015, actress Julianne Moore and producer Bruce Cohen petitioned to change the Confederate name of their Virginia high school to J.E.B. Stuart High School.

In June 2014, a group of students attending the school in Virginia began a petition to replace its name, which honors a Confederate leader, with that of a Supreme Court Judge and civil rights leader, Thurgood Marshall. 

They had taken up the cause after nine black parishioners were shot to death at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The incident inspired a discussion about whether it was appropriate to keep honoring Confederate names.

The Civil War Era looms large even around the 2024 election.

In April, former President Donald Trump made headlines when he praised the “beautiful” Battle of Gettysburg, which had over 50,000 American casualties.