A court case filed against the Shenandoah County School Board for its decision to revert two schools to their original Confederate names began on Thursday morning. WMRA’s Bridget Manley reports.
Opening arguments began at the federal courthouse in downtown Harrisonburg. The plaintiffs include several Shenandoah County students and the Virginia Chapter of the NAACP, who are suing the school board for their controversial decision to revert two school names, which were changed in 2020, back to their former Confederate names.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs presented their opening arguments, which included the history of "massive resistance" in Virginia following the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate schools through the decision in 2020 by that school board to change the names in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Jim Guynn, attorney for the school board, took a different approach. Saying that there are “very few citizens living in Shenandoah County who lived there in 1959” and that “people don’t like change,” the defense argued that the school board responsible for the name change in 2020 decided on the new name in just nine days without public input.
At one point during the opening arguments, Judge Michael Urbanski criticized Guynn, who stated that the school board members did not have racist intent when they changed the names.
Urbanski reminded Guynn that the board members invoked their legislative privilege in this case, refusing to provide testimony, documents, and other related materials to the plaintiffs. Therefore, they could not use their own thoughts or feelings in the case, saying, “you cannot use that as both a shield and a sword.”
Retired Brigadier General Ty Seidule provided expert testimony for the plaintiffs on why the Civil War was fought, the narrative of the Lost Cause developed during the Jim Crow era, and the timing of Confederate commemorations.
He said that the war was fought over the right for the South to both maintain and expand slavery, and that Confederates were proud to be enslavers, and that there was substantial evidence in each state’s secession statements confirming it was primarily about the preservation of slavery.
He showed evidence of Virginia textbooks that portrayed slavery as civilized and stated that the naming of streets, schools, and the erection of statues were part of a multi-pronged strategy to terrorize Black southerners and maintain political power.
Brian Daugherity, a professor of Virginia history at Virginia Commonwealth University and an expert on massive resistance in Virginia, was called to the stand before the court was recessed for the day. His testimony will continue on Friday.
