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.

  • Flying Squid
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    38 months ago

    Sure, why not? We’re heading toward Idiocracy anyway.

    Just watched that movie today with my 13-year-old, by the way. She was both amused and horrified since she could see a hell of a lot of parallels to 2024…