I can’t say that I was that surprised by the news this morning that Shenandoah County, Virginia’s school board voted overwhelmingly to reverse an earlier decision in 2020 to rename two public schools that honor Confederate leaders. The board members had all been elected since the earlier vote after having campaigned that the decision to rename the schools had failed to solicit sufficient public involvement.
Regardless of whether that is true the five members decided that honoring Confederate leaders in public schools is appropriate in 2024.
In some ways this moment reflects the same political realities and backlash that led to the renaming in 2020 as was the case when Stonewall Jackson High School was dedicated in 1959. Civil War memory has always been infused with politics.
Numerous public schools were named or renamed to honor Confederate leaders in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
Here are two pages from the first issue of Stonewall Jackson High School’s yearbook, published in 1960.
The decisions to rename schools, along with the publication of new history textbooks that emphasized Lost Cause themes, was part of a broader push back against the civil rights movement.
I am pretty confident that we are not looking at the beginning of a wave of similar changes in Virginia and elsewhere. The trend of communities distancing themselves from public commemorations of the Confederacy has been ongoing for the past few decades and there is no reason to believe that this won’t continue.
The news coverage of this decision is going to be extensive and I suspect that even in communities, where there is support to reverse similar votes, school boards and councils will choose to avoid the close media scrutiny. I am already receiving emails from news outlets to comment.
Still, this is unfortunate for this particular community. Despite the fact that the school board has stated that only private funds will be utilized to make the necessary changes to school signs and everything else that needs to be rebranded, public funds will inevitably be diverted from necessary school improvements. Then there is the confusion surrounding diplomas for students that have graduated in recent years. What a mess.
Finally, one wonders what these students are learning about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and a whole host of other issues. Is Jackson still being taught as possessing an “unblemished Christian character” and “fearless courage” as he was described in this yearbook?
In a sense, it doesn’t matter what students are being taught in their history classes. Shenandoah County, Virginia’s school board has made it clear that Stonewall Jackson and the cause for which he gave his life to defend is worth emulating.
Sad.
Ty Seidule, author of _Robert E. Lee and Me_, has published a long Washington Post letter to the editor about the Shenandoah blunder. Here's the gift link for anyone who'd like to read it:
https://wapo.st/3QOkhc2
It will be recalled that Brigadier General Seidule, U.S. Army, Retired, aspired as a young man to become a gentleman like, as he then thought, Lee had been. His book shows the long evolution of the outlook that vividly appears in the letter. It also shows a lot about the evolution generally of Civil War memory, in my view.
Seidule served in the combat part of the Army for a decade before getting a history Ph.D. at Ohio State. He chaired the West Point history department before retiring. He served as vice chairman of the commission that renamed Army posts that had been misnamed for Confederates.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Did George Santayana learn this in Virginia?
Re KML's specific sentiment: "I am pretty confident that we are not looking at the beginning of a wave of similar changes in Virginia and elsewhere". Sorry for my pessimism but that wave is at least seven years old.
Now it's May 13, 2024. It is a month past the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination ... April 14, 1865.
I'd bet that nobody in the four days before 4/13/1865 thought "The South (Would) Rise Again". But it did in Reconstruction, culminating in an open racist (from guess where: Virginia!) who successfully masqueraded as a Democrat (from: New Jersey!) for World Democratization in the White House.
And again after their games against African Americans (and other groups) were exposed and defeated (mostly) peaceably by a wave of Civil Rights Acts, nationwide peaceful (on the part of the marchers) marches.
It resurfaces in Shenandoah County, yet again. (in: Virginia!)
Seven years ago, in 2017, some "very fine people" staged a vile demonstration in Charlottesville, VA. It's only an hour's drive from this high school to Charlottesville, VA. An hour's drive, but also apparently just an hour's history in the minds of Shenandoah County, VA, residents.
Verily, verily, I say unto we: 159 years is like a month in the minds of the 'unreconstructed'.
Lincoln's sermonic Second Inaugural Address announced a kindly approach for the reconstruction of the nation. What survived? Seemingly, only the phrase: "one of (the factions) would make war rather than let the nation survive".
After 159 years, where does the USA stand? In a tight and desperate race for the 2025 presidency. (Wife and I just plunked another C-note into our homie's, Kamala, race!)
The man (whose name I try not to speak) opined that this very fine faction rioting with hate-chants was equivalent to the peaceful counter-demonstrators. He speaks again in his 2025 presidential campaign. He proposes a totalitarian future for us in virtually the same words that Hitler and Mussolini shouted.
These things can work in both directions. I write the following paragraph in a half-hearted effort to be optimistic.
My own ancestors in Japan nurtured a political grudge from 1600 to 1868. Patient, after 250 years, they fomented a revolution (after the US kindly 'opened' Japan by the threat of force) that took another 15 years to cook, boil over, and win. My ancestors' side revolted against a totalitarian dictatorship and installed a government fashioned after Western models. (Including a navy fashioned on the Brits' and its army fashioned on the Prussians. How did that turn out?)
It's been only 159 years for America.
A quarter-century ago, I visited Vietnam with a former refugee. He took me to a vast desolate tract of Mekong Delta mud with miles-long culverts intended to ferry produce from soon-to-have-been-verdant farmlands. My friend's father had been internally deported to work that land, and it was never productive. Why? The land was poisoned by a heavy metal probably washed down over centuries from the Himalayas.
When the land is poisoned, no seeds will sprout whether planted by Communists, Imperialists, or just peasants.
When the minds of children of the Old Confederacy continue to be poisoned for generations their children's schools named after traitors who are lionized, when and how do we end the cycle? In Greek times, Hercules defeated evil personified as a Hydra, and used its trick against it to kill it when combat failed.
However, when do we end the cycle when we repeatedly continue to use persuasion and Democratic Values?
KML is years in advance of me in education, sensitivity to nuance, and having resided in a post-Confederate state. Yet this is how I see it from the Left Coast. (Added disclosure: Any of these sentiments traceable to my having been born just across the Potomac River and raised just across the Potomac River from Virginia, please attribute to the relief and even, joy, of one nearly-condemned to repeat Virginia's past.)