This past May, some colleagues and I published
an article in the
Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership (JCEL) about a high school in Virginia (it's a composite) named for the leader of the secessionist Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee. I blogged about that article
here. I have watched and studied the issue of Confederate-named public schools and mascots with great interest over the course of the past few years, bookmarking dozens of articles (maybe someday I will do a study about it). However, I have more than a scholarly interest in this.
Ever since Charlottesville, across the state of Virginia, and country, counties and cities have been reconsidering their Confederate-named schools and mascots. In Virginia alone, so far I know of efforts in
Arlington,
Fairfax, and
Prince William Counties. There's one Virginia county, however, where the School Board is studiously
not reconsidering their Confederate-named schools and mascots, and that's the county where I live,
Hanover.
About five or six years ago, I realized the importance of local and state education policy and decided to get much more active at those levels. I wrote about that
here. I have been very open and public with my advocacy efforts, but I have mostly privately expressed consternation about and advocated for holding public discussions about the two Confederate-named schools and mascots in Hanover County Public Schools (note: these schools are not in my district, or part of the county):
Lee-Davis High School (mascot: Confederates) and
Stonewall-Jackson Middle School (mascot: the Rebels). The names promote white supremacy and are shameful and harmful to students and community members. Needless to say, my efforts have not resulted in any movement.
Certainly, other Hanover County Public Schools stakeholders have also advocated about the name and mascots over the years, but after Charlottesville happened, advocacy around this issue got new urgency. More Hanover residents and Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall-Jackson Middle School community members and alumni started speaking up. For example, an alumnus named Ryan Leach, started
this effort on facebook which includes an eloquent and compelling statement as to why the names should be changed, and which led to
this larger petition addressed to the School Board. I came across this letter written to the Hanover School Board by another alumna, Mary Murrell, about why the names and mascots should be changed. I don't normally post about local matters here but I was so impressed with how well-written and -researched Mary's letter was and thought it so relevant to the greater issue, that I asked her if I could share it.
Here it is:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August
24, 2017
Dear
Hanover County School Board,
I
am a graduate of Lee-Davis High School (class of 1981) and have recently joined
hundreds of people in signing a petition asking you to change the name of Lee-Davis
High School. As I have additional thoughts about the name, I wanted to write
you directly and lay out why I believe this action is urgently needed. I also
want to include Stonewall Jackson Middle School, which I attended in 1977-78,
to the discussion.
The Context in which
Lee-Davis Was Named
As
you likely know, when the name of Lee-Davis was chosen in May 1958, Virginia
was defiantly refusing to integrate its public schools. At that time, Virginia
remained one of only seven states that still maintained segregated schools, even
though the Supreme Court had handed down its unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education four years earlier.[i]
Successive Virginia governors had called for statewide “massive resistance” to that ruling, and Virginia’s legislature passed a series of laws that defied
federal orders to desegregate its schools.[ii]
In
1958, despite Brown vs. Board of
Education, the county was busy planning two new all-white high schools: one
for the eastern end and one for the western end. Black students would continue
to attend the county’s only “negro” high school, located in Ashland.[iii]
The School Board chose to name the eastern end high school Lee-Davis. According
to the minutes of the May 6, 1958, School Board meeting, the Board did so “in
the memory and honor of two prominent members of the Confederacy,” Robert E.
Lee and Jefferson Davis.[iv]
How and Why the
Name Lee-Davis Was Chosen
Various
rumors have circulated about how and why the School Board arrived at the name
Lee-Davis. I have looked into what evidence exists in the public record. At the
time of the May 1958 naming, the Richmond-Times
Dispatch reported only that the School Board approved the name “on
recommendation by a special committee.”[v]
The Herald-Progress provides more
precise details.[vi] The new eastern end high school was to
consolidate two existing overcrowded high schools (Battlefield Park and
Washington-Henry). Earlier in the year, juniors from the two schools independently
considered names for what would become their new school.[vii]
Each group of students submitted just one name: the Battlefield High students
recommended the name Jefferson Davis; the Washington-Henry High students recommended
the name William White, in honor of a teacher at both high schools who had been
killed in World War II.[viii]
Later,
the County School Board would choose a different name: Lee-Davis. The new name
came from B. W. Sadler, the School Board member representing the Henry district.[ix]
The school was in a hurry to name itself, as it was already May and officials
were hoping the school could open in September. Because students at Battlefield
Park were nicknamed “the rebels,” and the students at Washington-Henry were
nicknamed “the statesmen,” Sadler thought that his name captured a bit of both.
Jefferson Davis, he reasoned, had been a rebel, so his name fit with the
Battlefield Park side, and Robert E. Lee, a general and a statesman, suited the
Washington-Henry side. Sadler also added that the combination of the two names
Lee and Davis into one hyphenated name had “individuality.”
The Context of the
Naming of Stonewall Jackson
Even
after the last of the massive resistance laws were ruled unconstitutional in
1959, Virginia continued to fight school integration. Some school systems were
closed entirely rather than admit black students. Full integration would
require the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. And yet, even with that landmark legislation, Hanover County was among the last
counties in Virginia to fully integrate its schools.[x]
Spurred on by a lawsuit brought by the parents of black students, Hanover
County finally fully integrated its public schools with the 1969-70 school year—a
full fifteen years after Brown v. Board
of Education and ten years after Lee-Davis opened.
That
first year of full integration, 1969, presented an opportunity to replace the
name Lee-Davis with a more inclusive or at least neutral name such as Mechanicsville
High. Unfortunately, that renaming did not happen. Rather, the Hanover County
School Board chose for its new junior high school, adjacent to Lee-Davis, yet
another confederate name: Stonewall Jackson Junior High.
Why the School
Names Need to be Changed
Public
schools have the legal obligation to provide an education to all children and
to treat their students equally. Public schools are powerful institutions that
shape and influence their students for years to come. School names such as
Lee-Davis and Stonewall Jackson – along with their attendant mascots and
nicknames – are as much public symbols of the Confederacy as monuments, statues, and the Confederate
flag.[xi]
When the Hanover County School Board chose in 1958 to honor prominent men
precisely for their association with the Confederacy, it sent a message to the
public and to its students. This message said, and continues to say, that
public authorities in Hanover County esteem and celebrate the Confederacy. It
is wrong for the Hanover County Public Schools to do this for the following
reasons:
Paying
homage to the Confederacy through naming, mimicry, and memorialization disdains,
insults, and alienates black students. No matter how
common or “normal” symbols of the Confederacy are throughout Virginia, they are
never neutral. Confederate symbols convey a message of domination and exclusion.
When a public school honors the Confederacy, it conveys a preference for the concerns
and interests of the historically dominant social group (whites) in the South
at the same time that it conveys a lack of sympathy and even contempt for the
historically dominated group (blacks). When a public school honors the
Confederacy, it tells non-white students that Hanover is a white person’s
county and that they don’t belong in the same way that whites do. By sending
these messages – not limited to those I’ve listed – a public school betrays the
spirit of equality that is fundamental to public education. When our
public authorities continue to pay homage to the Confederacy, black (and also immigrant)
students can never be sure they will be treated fairly. A community cannot
prosper if any group of citizens is alienated or feels targeted for
discrimination.
Virginia
and Hanover County’s defiance with regard to school integration during the
Civil rights era is a regrettable legacy that needs to be redressed not
perpetuated. It has been shown
that Confederate symbols spiked in two distinct historical periods.[xii]
The first period was the early 20th
century, after Reconstruction, when white supremacy again took hold in the
South, the Ku Klux Klan gained power, and southern states passed Jim Crow laws
that terrorized black citizens. The second spike occurred during the civil
rights period from 1950-1970, when Southerners forcefully resisted federal
efforts aimed at integration. Both Lee-Davis and Stonewall Jackson were named
during this period. Lee-Davis was named amid Virginia’s “massive resistance,” and
Stonewall Jackson was named in very year that Hanover County belatedly integrated
its public schools for real. Notably, no schools in Hanover have been named
after Confederate figures since this time. The School Board has chosen
non-controversial place names like Atlee, Pole Green, and Hanover for the newest
schools. This is all for the good but it does not alleviate the prior problem
of Lee-Davis and Stonewall Jackson.
The
Confederacy was founded upon and committed to abhorrent beliefs, and public
institutions should not in any way associate themselves with such beliefs. Southern states,
including Virginia, seceded from the United States in order to preserve slavery
in the South and to extend it into the territories. Since the 1950s, there is
no longer any dispute among academic historians about the reasons for the Civil
War.[xiii]
Slavery was a system of oppression under-girded by the belief that white people
were superior to black people. Its leaders, such as Alexander Stephens, did not
believe, as the Declaration of Independence declares, that all men were created
equal but, rather, that slavery was “the natural and normal condition” of black people.[xiv] There
is no “racially friendly” case for the Confederacy, no matter how passionately
some people, including many in the Lee-Davis community, insist there is.
Celebrations
of the Confederacy depend upon discredited history that was promulgated after
the South lost the Civil War, and, as such, these celebrations mis-educate young
people about the past.
After the defeat of the Confederacy, its former leaders (and others) cultivated
a revised version of events that sanitized the Civil War as one fought over
states rights, “Southern honor,” the South’s superior agrarian way of life, and
so forth. This new version of history gave rise to the romantic myth of the
Lost Cause. This myth remains stubbornly popular -- especially, but not only,
in the South – but, regardless, it is still a myth. A public school teaches
history not myth. I am certain that Lee-Davis teachers teach proper history. But
outside the classroom, students confront other ideas about the past. Lee-Davis calls
itself the “home of the Confederates,” titles its yearbook The Confederate, incorporates two Confederate figures into its
logo, and takes as its motto “Tradition and Pride.” In what traditions should
its students be proud, exactly?
Honoring
the Confederacy imposes a false heritage onto white students. Many students
that attend or have attended Lee-Davis, including myself, do not consider the
Confederacy to be part of their heritage, or, if they do, they do not take
“pride” in it. I love many things about Virginia, and can find many things
about its history and culture to be proud of, but its leadership in the Civil
War and its continued tendency to defend and whitewash the Confederacy is not
among them. The schools’ names should be changed because they encourage white
students to believe that the Confederacy and its “traditions” are something
that they should value and embrace, and that the Confederacy is a positive part
of who they are and a positive source of their identity. A public school
violates the public trust when it imposes such associations and values upon its
students. Children in Hanover County schools – of any color or background – are
not confederates. They should not be taught to carry the Confederacy in their
hearts or to derive values from it.
What’s
even more concerning is that Neo-Nazi groups are currently engaged in something
similar. David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, equates Confederate
symbols such as statues, flags and schools with “white culture,” and Neo-Nazi
groups, like the Klan before them, have embraced Confederate symbols, as seen
at the recent Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march. These extremists have no
hesitation in admitting that the Confederacy was about white supremacy—that’s
why they want to associate with it.[xv]
The Hanover School Board needs to seriously
consider whether it is any longer possible to disentangle the Neo-Nazis’ Confederacy
with the “romantic” Lost Cause Confederacy.[xvi]
A Duty to Overcome
the Discrimination of the Past
In discussions of changing
Lee-Davis’s name, I have witnessed a lot of strong feelings. I believe such strong
feelings arise precisely because current and former students have come to see
being a “Confederate” as somehow an important part of their history, culture,
and identity. I have argued throughout this letter that a public school should not
play a role in promoting such an identity. But many people in the Lee-Davis
community nevertheless do feel that “pride” that they have been encouraged to
feel. You therefore cannot look to the current and former student body to
resolve this issue through voting or petitions. They are likely only to deliver
the status quo.
You
will be criticized for whatever you do, I recognize that, but doing nothing is
not an option. The Confederate names were chosen a long time ago. That was not
your doing. But today you have the privilege and the power to undo them. The
problem is not going to go away as long as the names remain. Small tweaks like
saying “C-fed” instead of “Confederate” at football games do not solve anything;
they only point to the problem that won’t go away. The divisiveness that
surrounds the discussion of name change is already
embedded in the names themselves. That divisiveness cannot be avoided, but
it can be overcome. Changing the names is the way forward.
In
1966 a federal judge wrote, “The duty rests with the [Hanover County] School
Board to overcome the discrimination of the past.”[xvii]
It is 2017 and Hanover County has still not overcome the “discrimination of the
past.” Lee-Davis’s mission statement says that the school aspires to “assure a
quality education for success in a changing world.” Hanover County is part of
that changing world. Please find new names for Lee-Davis High School and
Stonewall Jackson Middle School.
Sincerely,
Mary
Murrell,
Class of 1981
[i] Kristen Green, Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward
County: A Family, A Virginia Town, A Civil Rights Battle (New York:
HarperCollins, 2015), p. 165.
[ii] There is a large
literature on this subject. Bob Smith, They
Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951-1964 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); James Latimer, “The Rise and
Fall of ‘Massive Resistance,” Richmond
Times-Dispatch, Sept 22, 1996, A1, A9-A12; Ira M. Lechner, “Massive
Resistance: Virginia’s Great Leap Backward,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 74:4 (1998); Matthew Lassiter and Andrew
Lewis, eds. The Moderates’ Dilemma:
Massive Resistance to School Desegregation in Virginia (Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1998); George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement
(Oxford: Hodder Arnold, 2006), pp. 52ff.
[iii] Given the size of
the county, some black students, especially those in the eastern side of the
county, had to endure two-hour bus rides to school, in dilapidated and
segregated buses—or not go at all. “Gandy High Alumni Reflect on School Days,” Herald-Progress, September 10, 2009, p.
1.
[iv] Hanover County
School Board minute book, May 6, 1958.
[v] “Hanover School
Named Lee-Davis,” Richmond-Times Dispatch,
May 7, 1958.
[vi] Dan Sherrier,
“The History of Lee-Davis and Patrick Henry High Schools,” Part II, Herald-Progress, October 2, 2008, pp. 2,
6.
[vii] In 2009, a
student from the first graduating class told a reporter covering the 50th
anniversary celebrations: "I remember sitting in Washington Henry and
going through all these names…. We were trying to be really creative." Richmond Times-Dispatch April, 17, 2009.
[viii] Whether intended
or not, the latter suggestion would have resulted in an all-white high school
with the name “White High School.”
[ix] Sadler later
became the School Board Chairman and, in 1966, earned lasting notoriety after
the School Board banned To Kill a
Mockingbird. Claudia Durst Johnson, “The
Issue of Censorship,” pp. 3-22, in Harper
Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House,
2006). Sadler
died in 1976.
[x] Herald-Progress, July 11, 1968. Cited in
Dan Sherrier, “The History of Lee-Davis and Patrick Henry,” Part X, Herald-Progress December 11, 2008. See
also Rebecca Bray and Dr. Lloyd Jones, The
History of Education in Hanover County, Virginia, 1708-2008 (Ashland, VA:
Hanover County Public Schools, 2010).
[xii] See Whose Heritage?
[xiii] James M.
McPherson, “Southern Comfort,” New York
Review of Books, April 21, 2001.
[xiv] McPherson,
“Southern Comfort.”
[xv] For examples of
white supremacists embracing the Confederacy for its racist ideology, see: Campbell
Robertson, Alan Blinder, and Richard Fausset, “In Monument Debate, Calls
for an Overdue Reckoning on Race and Southern Identity,” New York Times, August 18, 2017.
[xvii] Herald-Progress, February 3, 1966, Cited
in Ben Sherrier, “History of Lee-Davis,”
November 13, 2008, p. A-9.
