Google Maps/Screenshot By NPR. A recent lawsuit aims to stop Mountain View High School in western Virginia from reverting to its previous name, Stonewall Jackson High School. The Shenandoah County School Board decided in May to reinstate the Confederate general’s name.
June 11, 2024 Story by: Editor
The NAACP has initiated legal action against a Virginia school board, asserting that the board’s decision to reinstate Confederate names on two schools will adversely affect the education of Black students.
On Tuesday, the Virginia NAACP filed a federal lawsuit against the Shenandoah County School Board. The suit contends that the board’s decision to restore the names of Confederate officials to two schools propagates harmful and discriminatory messages against Black students.
The board voted 5-1 on May 9 to revert the names of Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary to Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School.
The lawsuit states, “When Black students are compelled to attend schools that glorify the leaders and ideals of the Confederacy, they are subject to a racially discriminatory educational environment, which has significant psychological, academic, and social effects.”
Ashley Joyner Chavous, an attorney at Covington and Burling, one of the law firms representing the NAACP, noted that the decision was made despite significant opposition from the community. “There was an extensive comment period where the community, parents, teachers, and students expressed how horrible they thought the names were,” she said.
The lawsuit seeks the removal of Confederate names, mascots, and other references from the two schools. Marja Plater, senior counsel at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, also representing the NAACP, emphasized that the community had collaboratively worked with the school board to establish Mountain View and Honey Run as the new names, and that process should be honored.
Four students and their parents are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They argue that attending schools with Confederate names hinders their education, damages their self-esteem, and violates their rights under the First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
Chavous added, “It’s likely to only amount to more acts of racism in the community. We’ve heard from several folks about how these names make people feel.”
“The school board shouldn’t establish any names for the Confederacy or what the Confederacy represents,” she further remarked.
Shenandoah School Board Chairman Dennis Barlow did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment. However, according to the minutes of the May 9 board meeting, he mentioned that he does not believe Black soldiers he served with in the Army would view attending a school named Stonewall Jackson High School as their greatest concern.
As of Thursday, no lawyer was listed for the school board, according to U.S. District Court records.
The Coalition for Better Schools, a conservative group, spearheaded the effort to restore the names. They argued in an April letter to the board that Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Commander Turney Ashby have significant historical ties to Virginia. However, numerous school districts and politicians removed Confederate names and monuments from public spaces in 2020 to eliminate symbols of racism, according to a 2022 USA TODAY analysis.
Experts told USA TODAY that this appears to be the first instance of an entity restoring Confederate names it had previously voted to remove, and suggested this action might inspire others to do the same as support for Confederate names and monuments persists.”Despite the large public outcry against Confederate monuments in 2020, there’s still a lot of people who support the practice, or at least, don’t understand why it’s a problem,” said Carole Emberton, a history professor at the University at Buffalo. Source: USA Today
