Day two of the lawsuit between the Shenandoah County School Board, the Virginia Chapter of the NAACP, and several Shenandoah County Students was a big day, filled with emotional testimony and more historical context. WMRA’s Bridget Manley reports.
For a second day, lawyers for the students and the Virginia NAACP argued their case against the Shenandoah County School Board’s decision to restore two school names that are linked to the Confederacy, connecting past decisions made by those involved in massive resistance to the present day, while also highlighting the harm caused to Black students.
The day began with expert testimony from Brian Daugherity, a professor of Virginia history at Virginia Commonwealth University and an expert on massive resistance in Virginia.
Using primary sources such as newspaper articles, school board minutes, and interviews, Daugherity outlined the years following the Supreme Court's decision to end school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 through forced integration in the mid-1960s. He described the massive resistance campaign as Virginia fought against integration and how the construction and naming of Stonewall Jackson High School in Shenandoah County played a role in deterring and frightening Black students from attempting to enroll.
Two school systems were being run in Shenandoah County during segregation, and there was no high school for Black students to attend. Black students had to be bused to Winchester, Manassas, or Harrisonburg if they wanted to attend high school, at great pain and expense to their families.
Stonewall Jackson High School was built from 1957 to 1959. Showing photos from an early Stonewall Jackson Heritage yearbook, Daugherity displayed images of the school's construction, in which a man held a Confederate flag in multiple photos. He also said that the KKK had used the exact location before construction.
The school opened in the fall of 1959, but Black students were not permitted to attend until 1963.
Daugherity said that during this time, Black Virginians were excluded from the political process. Although many wrote letters to ask that their children be allowed to attend, they were denied. Daugherty also said that, to his knowledge, neither the Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors nor the School Board has ever had a Black member since.
Ashby-Lee Elementary School opened a decade later, well after school integration in 1975. However, Daugherity noted that the school opened during a different era of racial equality. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Green v. The School Board of New Kent County that “school choice,” a plan hatched in Virginia to further avoid desegregation by letting students “choose” the school they wished to attend, was unconstitutional. That context is important, according to Daugherity, because the vestiges of the segregated system were still in place at the elementary school's opening.
There were no Black teachers or administrators at the school. Black students were often placed in vocational classes instead of AP courses, they were disciplined at higher rates, and they did not have access to clubs or sports.
Daugherity became emotional when asked what Black students had to endure when they became the first to integrate schools in Virginia – being spat on, tripped, called names, teachers refusing to speak to them, and other various traumatic and painful experiences.
In the afternoon, Briana Brown, one of the students involved in the case, took the stand. Now attending the University of Virginia, Brown previously attended the Massanutten Regional Governors School, which is located in the current Stonewall Jackson High School, and graduated in spring 2024.
Brown spoke about her happiness when the names were changed in 2020 to reflect a more welcoming atmosphere for all students, and her sadness when the 2024 board reverted them.
She said that she felt “unwelcome in a place I go to every day,” but that she refused to be afraid any longer.
She testified that after changing her name, she returned to the Governor's School despite the change because she feared she might not graduate, and that the school was a prestigious program she wanted to attend to achieve her goals.
She experienced anxiety during her senior year, fearing that the name change might encourage or invite racist behavior, and she testified that it affected her mental health.
During cross-examination, she stated that although restoring the names didn’t eliminate educational opportunities, she pushed back against the defense's claims that it didn't harm her educational experience, explaining that she still felt the fatigue from the toll it took on her self-esteem and self-worth.
The day concluded with a video deposition from community activist Mike Scheibe, who heads the Coalition for Better Schools, the group that pushed for the Confederate names to be restored. Scheibe, who is in hot water for not disclosing a felony conviction when he filed to run for the Shenandoah County School Board, was grilled over a survey his group sent to some Shenandoah County residents asking about their opinions on the names.
That survey, which the school board used as evidence of strong support for the Confederate names, was criticized for its methodology, including that it was only sent to addresses in the Stonewall Jackson and Ashby-Lee school districts rather than the entire county.
The trial will continue throughout this week.
