After Floyd’s death, many school districts responded by renaming schools in an attempt to counter historical racism by removing the names of American figures known to have owned slaves, fought for the Confederate Army, supported segregation, or otherwise promoted racism against black Americans.
Names of schools targeted include Jackson, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
According to Education Week, external Since June 2020, at least 61 schools have changed their names to non-Confederate names. There are currently about 340 schools in 21 states named after Confederate figures.
Chandra Manning, a history professor at Georgetown University, said naming schools after Confederate soldiers took off in the 1950s after the government ordered that only whites in segregated schools had to admit black students in an effort to make black students feel unwelcome.
“It wasn’t a widespread trend until the Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954, which mandated desegregation of public schools,” she told the BBC. “And after that decision, the number and frequency of schools named after Confederate generals increased quite dramatically and suddenly.”
When the school board voted 5-1 in 2020 to remove the Stonewall Jackson name from the high school, it sparked a local debate.
“There is no way to preserve the traditions and heritage of one group and mitigate the injustice that another group may have felt,” Shenandoah County School Superintendent Andrew Keller said in the summer of 2020 when Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School were considering name changes. “You can’t keep a name and remove racist implications from it. You can’t claim to be inclusive, which we do, and have students who feel excluded.”
Others were concerned that the name change would mean losing an important part of local Civil War history. The only board member who opposed the move asked, according to media reports at the time, “Where will this end?”, external.
“At some point we have to take a stand. If we don’t, we’re going to lose the land,” said board member Marty Helsley.
