Virginia school board votes to restore schools' Confederate names

State of play: The vote reverses the board's decision in 2020 to remove the local elementary and high schools' association with Civil War-era Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.

• Consequently, Mountain View High School will revert to being called Stonewall Jackson High School, and Honey Run Elementary School will again be called Ashby-Lee Elementary School.

Driving the news: The Coalition for Better Schools, a local conservative group, pushed for the change, saying in a letter to the school board that the group believes "that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community's heritage and respect the wishes of the majority."

Background: Turner Ashby was a Confederate cavalry commander who owned enslaved people and advocated violence against Northern abolitionists, per Axios' justice and race reporter Russell Contreras.

• Ashby served under Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a general who was known to have owned six enslaved people.
• Ty Seidule's 2021 book, "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," details how statues to Jackson and other Confederate leaders came in 20th century eras to symbolize racial terror, as white southerners embraced a revisionist history about the Civil War.

• Defenders of Confederates downplay that criticism and say it's about history, Contreras notes.

What's next: "The funds required to implement the restoration must be provided by private donations exclusively and not be borne by the school system or government tax funds, though the SCPS [Shenandoah County Public Schools] will oversee disbursements relating to restoration costs," per the motion that was carried.

Flashback: Confederate monuments become flashpoints in protests against racism.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.