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The move by Shenandoah County Public School sends a message of
"Black inferiority and subjugation," the complaint filed by the
NAACP chapter in the U.S. District Court in Virginia said.
The civil rights organization accuses the school board of
violating the First and 14th amendments of the U.S.
Constitution, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
In 2020, the school board was the first in the U.S. to agree to
strip the names of Confederate generals - those of Robert E.
Lee, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson and Turner Ashby - from
schools. The board overturned that decision on May 10, again
naming a high school after Jackson and drawing on the names of
Ashby and Lee for an elementary school.
“My belief is the Shenandoah County School Board reaffirmed
their commitment to White supremacy and the celebration of a
race-based rebellion against the United States of America with
their vote to name public schools after military leaders of the
Confederate States of America,” Virginia NAACP President Rev.
Cozy Bailey said in a statement.
Mountain View High School was again renamed Stonewall Jackson
High, while Honey Run Elementary School was rechristened Ashby
Lee Elementary. The state NAACP asked a judge to order the
school board to remove the Confederate names and refrain from
using references to the breakaway republic in the future.
The school district did not immediately respond to a request for
comment from Reuters.
Jackson, Ashby and Lee were Virginia residents and among the
most notable military leaders of the Confederacy, which was made
up of pro-slavery states in the South.
The Confederacy went to war with the U.S. in the Civil War of
the 1860s. Lee was commander of the Army of Northern Virginia;
Jackson was a Confederate infantry general; Ashby was a rebel
cavalry commander.
Shenandoah County is a mostly white, heavily Republican region
in the Shenandoah Valley, about 150 miles (240 km) northwest of
Richmond, Virginia, which was the Confederate capital.
Black people represent less than 3% of the roughly 45,000
residents of the county, according to the 2020 Census.
(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York City; Editing by
Stephen Coates)
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