The Shenandoah County School Board made national news earlier this year when it voted to restore the names of Confederate generals to two schools. Two of our reporters teamed up to delve deeper into the controversy and the history behind it. WMRA's Bridget Manley brings us the final installment of this series.
Following the packed public comment in the wee hours of the May meeting where the vote to return to the confederate names was cast, every member of the Shenandoah County Board of Education but one voiced their support for restoring the names.
Board member Thomas Streett spoke about his desire to honor Stonewall Jackson, calling him a godly man. Board member Gloria Carlineo told the audience that if people really wanted to stop racism, then “stop finding racism and prejudice into everything.”
But Chairman Dennis Barlow, who ultimately voted to restore the Confederate names, acquiesced that the original naming decision in 1959 was motivated by the campaign of Massive Resistance to integration and that he would feel unsettled if he were Black.
DENNIS BARLOW: Yes, I did say I would feel unsettled if I were Black and going through this. Are you kidding? Of course I would be. Unsettled … it doesn’t mean that it would be the most horrible thing that ever happened.
But the students and members of the Virginia chapter of the NAACP that are suing the school board feel differently.
COZY BAILEY: When they [the students] walk through those halls, they feel a sense of oppression, a sense of reminding again that their ancestors in this country were considered “less than.”
Reverend Cozy Bailey is the president of the Virginia NAACP.
BAILEY: It helps to diminish and hurt their educational experience – that all important high school experiences that so many of us look back on with fond memories. But they are burdened knowing that there is a certain faction of people in their community who decided to change the names back. And that has severe negative impacts upon them.
MIKE SCHEIBE: If it had been named New Market High School back in 1959-60, I think they would feel the same way. I don't think it's about the icon or the name as much as it is their local heritage and their love of that school
Mike Scheibe is a spokesman for the Coalition for Better Schools, the organization funding the costs of renaming the schools.
SCHEIBE: Because back then and in a smaller area … the school was the center part of, really, the community, and the social. … So a lot of people were upset when all of a sudden, hey, there's cries of racism … and then basically people were told, "well the name of your school isn't good enough or not appropriate."
Scheibe says that the coalition has raised around $70,000 to restore the Confederate names and paid roughly $65,000 so far on items like sign installations, scoreboards, painting, and sports team uniforms.
Lawyers for the NAACP and the students say the school board’s actions were taken with the full knowledge of the historical context of the original naming, with the full knowledge of the reasons why the board retired the names in 2020, and after hearing from both Black and white members of the community who said that the names in the present day continue to glorify the values of the Confederacy and discriminate against Black students.
MARJA PLATER: The symbolism and the purpose of naming the school after a Confederate general at that time can be directly linked to the area’s opposition to progressive changes in that county and in the country at that time and the advancement of the Civil Rights movement.
Marja Plater is one of the plaintiffs' lawyers.
PLATER: If that was the message then, what message is the school board now sending? You know, if there were harms then, the students can be harmed in just the same way today.
Heather Brown, the mother of one of the students suing the school board, says that her daughter is speaking for many who cannot.
HEATHER BROWN: These kids are going to stand up for what’s right. Many of the students of color in this community, you know, are afraid to speak out. They are afraid to say how they’ve been treated, or how they are feeling. So I feel like, by them doing this, it is very brave of them, but then maybe it will help other students feel comfortable to come forward.
Marquetta Mitchell, one of the first Black students to integrate Shenandoah County schools, believes teaching the history of what happened in the Valley is important, but celebrating the leaders of the “Lost Cause” doesn’t help welcome all Americans today.
MARQUETTA MITCHELL: Does Stonewall Jackson present a welcome mat … to the folks who are coming down the pike now? I don't believe it does. I believe that as the world is changing globally and, as it's browning, in America we need to be able to … understand the contributions that that change is making to the community and prepare for it. Prepare for it in a welcoming way.
BAILEY: We are in a continual civil rights era within this country. In that we have to address the things that people are doing, essentially to try and take us back to the Jim Crow era.
While we as a nation clash over the meaning of the Confederate icons, from their factual histories to what they symbolize, the courts now have a chance to weigh in on a microcosm of that debate. In October, a federal judge will hear arguments for and against dismissing the NAACP's case against the Shenandoah County School Board.
Special thanks to the Massanutten Regional Library, Shenandoah County Library, and Shenandoah County Public Schools for their archives and assistance. This series referenced the following research materials:
Online resources
- Ancestry's U.S. Census records
- Encyclopedia Virginia
- Library of Congress census maps
- Shenandoah County Library's Shenandoah Voices Oral History Collection
- VMI's Stonewall Jackson Papers collection
- West Virginia Archives and History's "A State of Convenience: The Creation of West Virginia" collection
Books
- "A History of Shenandoah County," John M. Wayland, 1927
- "Echoes of Shenandoah," Shenandoah County Retired Teachers Association, 1977
- "Jacksonian Heritage" 1960 yearbook
- "Life and Letters of 'Stonewall' Jackson by his wife," Mary Anna Jackson, 1892
- "Reflections : early schools of Shenandoah County, Virginia," Shenandoah County Historical Society, 1995
- "Schools in New Market, Shenandoah County, Virginia," Nancy Branner Stewart, 1992
- "Shenandoah County in the Civil War," Richard B. Kleese, 1992
- "Shenandoah County Men in Gray," Thomas M. Spratt, 1992
Publication and government archives
- New York Times archives
- U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia records
- Shenandoah County School Board minutes
- Shenandoah Herald archives
- Shenandoah Valley archives
