Judge Rules Two Virginia Schools Must Change Confederate Names

By Clyde McGrady, New York Times

A federal judge has ordered a Virginia school board to again remove the names of three Confederate officers from two of its schools, after determining the board violated the civil rights of its Black students.

The school board’s decision to rename the schools after Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby “cannot be divorced from racial discrimination,” Judge Michael F. Urbanski wrote in his ruling.

Those Confederate generals “fought to preserve a political system that enslaved Blacks, and their legacy was used as a tool to fight school desegregation,” added the judge, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

The ruling comes two years after the Shenandoah County School Board reinstated the names to Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary after removing them in the summer of 2020, amid protests over racial injustice.

The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, all unarmed Black people, led to a cultural reckoning with racism in 2020.

But many symbols of that reckoning have been reversed during President Trump’s second term. Some Confederate symbols have been returned to public areas, while “divisive” topics such as slavery have been removed.

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