A Classic Renege?

Virginia school board voted to restore Confederate names to two schools

Photo by kevin turcios on Unsplash

Don’t know if you heard, but back in early May 2024, school board members in Virginia’s Shenandoah County voted to restore the names of two schools that previously honored Confederate leaders.

The board with a 5-1 vote decided to reinstate the names Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Elementary School. The names honored Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.

The names were changed during the time our country had a come to Jesus moment when the world was locked down during Covid and witnessed the murder of George Floyd.

A flood of atonement, except reparations, started flowing through. Numerous police reforms, such as banning chokeholds and neck restraints to name a few.

Companies revisited their diversity platforms, some television shows edited out some things that may have been offensive. Hell, there was even a brief uptick in hiring Black producers. Everyone wanted one. That has since died down now, but for a minute there, sistah was hot commodity. I’m just saying. Pops my collar.

Confederate statues and flags were taken down. Including changing Mississippi’s flag. I mean it took worldwide attention of a Black man getting murdered on camera for Mississippi to finally remove the Confederate flag from their state flag.

Old

New

As of 2021.

You read that right 2021.

As time passes and not that much time, we’re only in 2024, the Virginia school board said, yeah, maybe we had knee-jerk reaction to the blatant racism thing.  You know, just maybe.

The maybe turned into a yes. We don’t see what the big deal is in having these Confederate leaders’ names on our schools.

Maybe they feel nostalgic. Like how I refuse to call Sears Tower, Willis Tower. It will be forever Sears Tower. Period.

Let’s take a very brief look at the 3 men that they voted to keep the names of.

General Robert E. Lee – overall commander of the Confederate army.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson

Confederate Calvary Officer Turner Ashby nickname Black Knight of The Confederacy

From all of the articles I’ve read about the Virginia school board voting to change the names back, I haven’t seen anyone defending the names of Lee and Ashby.

They always defend Stonewall Jackson. They have to hang their hat on something, right? Because Lee ended up being the one known for leading the succession of the Union which puts him in the forefront of proslavery. Ashby was a great soldier for the Confederates.

Stonewall had some nuances.

He was torn on who to fight for: the Confederates or the Union. He owned 6 slaves but was known as one of the “good ones”, if there could be such a thing.

Basically, he wasn’t bad like the other owners with torture and rape. He was a “good Christian man.” So he may not have been violent towards slaves, but he enforced the biblical belief that slavery was okay.

“Christianity was proslavery,” said Yolanda Pierce, the dean of the divinity school at Howard University. “So much of early American Christian identity is predicated on a proslavery theology. From the naming of the slave ships, to who sponsored some of these journeys including some churches, to the fact that so much of early American religious rhetoric is deeply intertwined . . . with slaveholding: It is proslavery.” Some Christian institutions, notably Georgetown University in the District, are engaged in a reckoning about what it means that their past was rooted in slaveholding. But others have not confronted the topic. “In a certain sense, we’ve never completely come to terms with that in this nation,” Pierce said.

- Washington Post April 30, 2019

This Washington Post Article is a great article.  A worthy read.

A Classic Renege?

Comedy clip link also here

Growing up, people would say, aw, man, you reneging. Or you reneged. Meaning, going back on your word. Changing your mind on a promise.

In our laws, we have every right to change as a majority sees fit. That’s the beauty of democracy, right?

This action of changing the schools’ names back to their former Confederate leaders doesn’t speak of nostalgia like I mentioned before with Sears Tower.

It speaks to me that the people that supported this change LOVE what these names represent.

For me, these names represent:

• A country divided.

• A section of the country that believed people like me weren’t human.

• People like me didn’t have a right to be here unless of course they were taken advantage of and abused mentally and physically for the sake of profits.

• A people that needed to feel superior than anyone that was different from themselves.

That’s the way I feel. What are your thoughts? Sound off in the comments.

And don’t forget, for my paid subscribers, I am starting a monthly zoom call the last Saturday of the month to discuss history.

This month, it will be Saturday, June 29^th at 11am (pst) – Noon (pst). We can expound on anything I’ve touch on thus far, or chat about something new.

I will send out a zoom link the week before.

Looking forward to chopping it up with you all!

Best,

Danita

References

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/us/shenandoah-county-confederate-school-names-reaj/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/virginia-confederate-school-stonewall-jackson-shenandoah.html

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/05/20/virginia-school-board-restores-confederate-names/