Va. School Board Restores Confederate Names to Two Schools

In Shenandoah County, Virginia, one of the baleful effects of the George Floyd Hoax has been undone.

The school board has voted to restore the names of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee, Turner Ashby, and Stonewall Jackson to two schools.

The historically illiterate, leftist Xverse is none too happy about it, despite the vote being the result of what leftists claim to revere: democracy.

Twice Renamed

Few if any of the residents of the county had trouble with Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School until 2020.

But after Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while being restrained by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin, an hysterical anti-Confederate movement arose that ended in the destruction of Confederate statues and the renaming of anything that honored a Confederate.

Thus did the board vote to call the high school Mountain View and the elementary school Honey Run, anodyne names that seemingly offended no one … as intended.

The locals were unimpressed.

“A fury had been unleashed in the rural county in the mountains of Virginia,” as The New York Times put it:

People crowded into school board meetings, denouncing the naming process as secretive and rushed, and voicing deeper resentments about cultural changes they saw as being foisted upon them.

After a re-vote ended in a tie in 2022, the name changes stood. But opponents swore that Stonewall Jackson would be revived. And on Friday, he was.

That revival occurred after the county’s Coalition for Better Schools asked for the board to reconsider the old names.

Noting that the names had been “integral parts of our community for years,” the coalition explained that a survey of area residents showed “overwhelming support” to rename the schools: 91.3 percent wanted the schools once again to honor the Confederates.

“We understand that the decision to rename these schools was made in response to discussions surrounding Confederate symbols,” the coalition continued:

However, we believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community’s heritage and respect the wishes of the majority.

“The overwhelming majority of the stakeholders in the Southern Campus Districts desire the names to be restored,” the coalition explained, and so the board should “consider the majority sentiment while making decisions on behalf of the community, as opposed to the top-down process used by the previous School Board.”

Reaction

Confederate haters on X went off like a 12-pound Napoleon. 

“Racism is alive and well, and anyone who believes otherwise is ignorant by choice,” Red Beans wrote.

Fumed Delegate Sam Rasoul, a Muslim and the son of Palestinian immigrants:

Shenandoah Co. is the 1st locality in the US to revert schools back to their Confederate names. By honoring the Lost Cause, this decision marks a stain on our Commonwealth that even Robert E. Lee would oppose. We must irrevocably ban vestiges of slavery.

“In not so shocking news the current school board in Shenandoah County, VA is mostly racist,” another user wrote.

“Hey, congrats to the Shenandoah County Public Schools @ShenCoVASchools for making sure any and all racists feel comfortable in @VisitShenCoVA,” wrote another. “Brave stuff you’re doing there. I say go all the way and restore separate drinking fountains in those schools.”

Then again, real Virginians supported the move.

“Victory!!! Time to start putting everything back!” Patrick Henry wrote.

Wrote an “unreconstructed Southerner”:

Woke tears are being shed this morning from sea to whining sea, as Shenandoah County, VA decides to change its school names back to honor Stonewall Jackson and Turner Ashby. Let this decision inspire other counties to restore our history.

“Shenandoah County did the unthinkable: they restored the names of American heroes to their schools!” Jefferson Davis crowed. “The tide is turning. Your voice matters. Keep fighting!”

Why Jackson and Ashby?

Stonewall Jackson is a hero in the Valley because of his magnificent campaign there in 1862 that military strategists study even today.

“In a swift feat of marching, deception, counter-marching and sheer boldness, Jackson had conducted one of the most audacious and brilliant campaigns in American military history,” the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation explains:

With only 18,000 men, marching several hundred miles over the course of a few weeks, Jackson inflicted twice as many casualties as he suffered, seized countless supplies, and tied up elements of three separate Federal armies totaling more than 60,000 men that would otherwise have been used against Richmond.

Killed during that campaign was Ashby, the Black Knight of the Confederacy, a tenacious cavalry commander. On June 6, 1862, in Harrisonburg, Union cavalry attacked Ashby’s forces on what is now the east side of the campus of James Madison University, which in 2020 removed the names of Ashby, Jackson, and Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury from campus buildings.

Ashby’s men repelled the attack, but a later infantry attack by the Pennsylvania Bucktails proved his end.

“Charge, men! For God’s sake. Charge!” Ashby shouted to his men. A federal bullet hit him in the chest and he fell dead.

“Later in the evening I saw a party of cavalry pass by with Ashby’s body, crying, most of them, like children,” said Confederate Captain Campbell Brown.

Said Jackson of Ashby:

As a partisan officer I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial. His powers of endurance incredible. His tone of character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes of the enemy.