A Virginia county school board is now facing a federal lawsuit after it voted last month to reinstate the names of Confederate leaders to two schools against considerable community opposition.
The Virginia chapter of the NAACP and five students in the Shenandoah County public school system sued the school board, alleging that the reversal of the school names violates the plaintiffs’ First and 14th Amendments rights, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act. The complaint, filed on Tuesday, states:
When Black students are compelled to attend schools that glorify the leaders and ideals of the Confederacy, they are subject to a racially discriminatory educational environment, which has significant psychological, academic, and social effects.
When students are required to identify as members of student bodies or teams named to honor Confederate leaders in order to participate in school activities, they are required against their will to endorse the violent defense of slavery pursued by the Confederacy and the symbolism that these images have in the modern White supremacist movement.
The lawsuit asks the court to find that the board violated the Constitution by restoring the Confederate names and to order the schools to be stripped of those names a second time. The Rev. Cozy Bailey, the president of the Virginia NAACP chapter, said in a statement that the school board had “reaffirmed their commitment to White supremacy and the celebration of a race-based rebellion” with its vote last month. School board chairman Dennis C. Barlow did not return NBC News’ emailed request for comment.
In 2020, during the racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, the Shenandoah County School Board — staffed by a different group of members — renamed Stonewall Jackson High School as Mountain View High School, and Ashby-Lee Elementary School as Honey Run Elementary School. The protests in 2020 also spurred institutions across the South to dismantle monuments and remove other memorials to Confederate leaders.
In May, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to restore the names of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby to the schools. It was the first time a school board had reversed such a decision, and it was opposed by a majority of community members who submitted public comments at the meeting.
The lawsuit refers to comments by several board members at the May meeting. One board member, Thomas Streett, said he did not “believe in” racism, according to the complaint, and another board member, Gloria Carlineo, said, “We’ve had a Black president, a Black attorney general, and some of our richest billionaires are Black. Is that what oppression looks like?”
