Restoring Confederate Names Prompts VA NAACP To Sue School District

SHENANDOAH COUNTY, VA — The Virginia chapter of the NAACP and five students have filed a lawsuit against the Shenandoah County school board a month after members voted to restore Confederate leader names to two schools, according to multiple reports citing court documents.

The lawsuit, first reported by NBC News, was filed in federal court and argues the Shenandoah County School Board created "an unlawful and discriminatory educational environment for Black students" when it voted last month to revert the name of Mountain View High School back to Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary School back to Ashby-Lee Elementary School.

“My belief is the Shenandoah County School Board reaffirmed their commitment to White supremacy and the celebration of a race-based rebellion against the United States of America with their vote to name public schools after military leaders of the Confederate States of America,” the Rev. Cozy Bailey, the president of the Virginia NAACP, said in a statement to NBC News.

The decision to restore the school names was made during a May 10 meeting that lasted more than six hours, the Washington Post reported.

The 5-1 vote reversed a 2020 decision to remove the names linked to Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Turner Ashby, three men who led pro-slavery states during the Civil War, reports said.

• Related: Confederate References Removed From Several Alexandria Streets

Fairfax City and Alexandria are among the communities in Northern Virginia that have changed street names in the last two year to drop associations with the Civil War, slavery, and the myth of the "Lost Cause."

Board member Thomas Streett, who voted to restore the names, called the 2020 decision a “knee-jerk reaction” that showed a lack of “loyalty” to the community, the Post reported.

“It was not done right,” Streett said, according to the Post, claiming that the previous decision was done in secret and didn’t represent what locals wanted.

Black students compose less than 3 percent of the Shenandoah County school system’s population, according to the lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press. Plaintiffs also include five students — identified by their initials and described as Black, white, and biracial — and their parents.

In the lawsuit, the NAACP wrote students will be “required against their will to endorse the violent defense of slavery pursued by the Confederacy and the symbolism that these images have in the modern White supremacist movement," according to the AP's report.

Shenandoah County school board chair Dennis C. Barlow did not return requests for comment from NBC News or the Associated Press.