The education board for a rural Virginia county voted early on Friday to restore the names of Confederate generals stripped from two schools in 2020, making the mostly white, Republican district the first in the U.S. to take such an action.
By a 5-1 vote, the Shenandoah County board overturned its 2020 decision that stripped a public high school and elementary school of their original names honoring three military leaders of the pro-slavery South in the Civil War.
Under the board’s action, Mountain View High School will again become known as Stonewall Jackson High, while Honey Run Elementary School will revert to the name Ashby Lee Elementary.
The names belong to some of the most well-known military leaders of the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee was commander of the Army of Northern Virginia; Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was a Confederate infantry general, and Turner Ashby was a rebel cavalry commander. All of them were Virginians.
Some people might think you’re just referencing the white flag of surrender, but one of the early flags was mostly white. Often called the Stainless Banner, or the White Man’s Flag, it was also called the Jackson Flag because it was used to drape Stonewall Jackson’s casket. Eventually it was replaced, because it was easily confused with a flag of surrender, and because it was really hard to keep clean what with all the people wiping their asses with it.