High School in Virginia Once Again Honors Stonewall Jackson

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.