Workers removing Richmond's Stonewall Jackson statue on Monument Avenue in June 2020. Photo: Ryan M. Kelly/AFP/Getty Images
A Virginia school board voted Friday to reinstate the Confederate names of two public schools that were changed following racial justice protests in 2020.
The big picture: The 5-1 vote overturns the board's 2020 decision to change the local elementary and high schools' association with Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby.
Mountain View High School will be renamed after Stonewall Jackson, and Honey Run Elementary will once again be Ashby-Lee.
Zoom in: The Coalition for Better Schools, a local conservative group, pushed for the move, saying "that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community's heritage and respect the wishes of the majority."
Background: Ty Seidule's book about the Lost Cause details how 20th-century era statues to Jackson and other Confederate leaders symbolized racial terror, as white southerners embraced a revisionist history about the Civil War.
