A Virginia school district was sued this week after restoring Confederate military names to two buildings, foreshadowing a broader battle that is heating up ahead of the election.
The Virginia NAACP sued the school board in Shenandoah County after it voted to move Mountain View High School to Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary back to Ashby Lee Elementary.
The NAACP argues in its federal lawsuit that students’ constitutional rights were violated by the district’s move to revert to Confederate names. It invoked the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment in its lawsuit, saying it “prohibits racial discrimination in state-supported institutions.”
“By celebrating the memory of these traitors every time a child walked through the school doors, by embracing the cold wind of intolerance, division and insensitivity, the Shenandoah County School Board has resurrected the ghosts of the Jim Crow era,” NAACP Virginia State Conference President Cozy Bailey said.
The group asked the U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg to remove Confederate names and mascots from schools.
“This is directly tied to efforts to keep black children out of school, to subjugate black communities and keep them from the benefits of education,” said Tyler Whittenberg, deputy director of the Advancement Project’s Opportunity to Learn program. “I have no doubt that this was the intent of the board members in making this decision.”
According to an Education Week tracker, about 340 schools in 21 U.S. states have names based on Confederate numbers.
“I think they are creating an inhospitable environment for black students to really learn and thrive socially,” James Jones, assistant professor and director of the Center on Politics and Race in America at Rutgers University, said of the change in Virginia. “I believe this is a trend; I think changing these things to honor the Confederates is a trend we’re likely to see across the country.”
After George Floyd was killed by police in 2020 in Minneapolis, a wave of at least 61 schools removed Confederate names from their buildings, Education Week found.
But the momentum has slowed, and those who consider honoring Confederate names part of their heritage and history have worked to reclaim those names.
“Confederate statues were taken down, the names of Confederate soldiers were removed from buildings, and it was a really good moment for many of us in the movement,” Whittenberg said. “Right after that, we saw a lot of backlash and just blatant attacks on all the gains for equality in education.”
Experts say attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts have led to an environment ripe for these changes in schools.
The movement first began in Republican states like Texas and Florida, which completely eliminated DEI initiatives at state universities, leading to the loss of hundreds of jobs. This measure spread to states that were not fully under Republican control, such as North Carolina.
“Good for the UNC-Chapel Hill board for recognizing common sense and fighting back against the woke mob. Now is the time to prioritize campus safety, not virtue signaling,” said Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) following the announcement of the vote to remove DEI from North Carolina’s public universities.
More than a dozen states have also passed laws restricting teaching about race, and several states have banned Advanced Placement African American studies classes from their curriculum.
“I think we’re seeing these broader DEI attacks, they started locally and we’ve seen them spread across the country,” Jones said.
Activists hope to see success in the NAACP lawsuit, but they also say it’s just a way to fight back.
“School board elections will continue to be extremely important. The conservative right has made a point of really putting a lot of energy into school board races, and those races typically don’t generate a lot of turnout, but when you allow this small group of people to make these things, or implement really harmful decisions that negatively impact the lives of black and Latinx students,” more people need to take action, Whittenberg said.
“I would just encourage people to get active in supporting local organizations that fight for education and equity,” he added.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
