Regarding the May 11 Metro article “Confederate names are restored at two schools”:
The board is wrong about their predecessors, wrong about who they are honoring and made the wrong decision to change the names back.
Whom we honor reflects our values. By naming schools after Jackson, Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee, Shenandoah County tells its children and the world that the Confederacy’s values are their values.
What are Confederate principles?
The first of these is treason, the only crime specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Lee took an oath “to obey the orders of the President” and “bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America” on March 30, 1861, when he was promoted to colonel in the U.S. Army. Just three weeks later, he abrogated his oath and joined the Virginia militia. Lee’s decision made him an outlier: Of the about nine U.S. Army colonels from Virginia in 1861, the others remained loyal to the United States. Lee, and only Lee, chose treason.
The second Confederate principle was the preservation and expansion of the moral abomination of slavery. As Confederacy Vice President Alexander Stephens said in his infamous Cornerstone Speech, in 1861, “Our new government … rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
And the supposed martial valor of Confederate soldiers and generals is not worth honoring either. The Confederates fought for an immoral cause in immoral ways. Lee’s and Jackson’s armies relied on enslaved people for their logistics. In 1862, when Jackson and Lee went north into Maryland for the Antietam campaign, their armies captured free Black people and brought them back to Virginia for enslavement.
The decision to name schools after Confederates was no misty reflection on a misremembered past, though it would be bad enough if that were true. Instead, these names were chosen as a further affront to Black Americans and the cause of equality.
In 1954, after the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional, Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd called the decision federal overreach and “the greatest crisis since the war between the states.” The White South’s “massive resistance” to school integration became another battle in a dormant civil war.
In 1956, Virginia enacted laws that would punish schools that integrated with the loss of state funds and that allowed the governor to shut such school systems entirely; two years later, the state shuttered schools in Charlottesville, Norfolk and Warren County rather than admit Black students. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1959 that the school closures were unconstitutional, Virginia’s White leaders searched for new ways to make schools inhospitable to Black students.
During this period, Virginia named hundreds of schools and streets after Confederates. Alexandria, my hometown, passed a law naming all new streets running north and south after Confederates and naming segregated Black elementary schools after Lee and Jackson.
As we approach Memorial Day, we should honor those who fought for the United States of America. Shenandoah County has plenty of loyal native sons whose names deserve to grace its school buildings. Charles E. Heishman from Edinburg, Va., died in France in World War I. Fifty-two men from Shenandoah County gave their lives in World War II. Army Specialist William Boyd Reedy from Woodstock was killed in action in Vietnam in 1969.
Rather than bestowing undeserved laurels on Confederate traitors, people in Virginia, and everywhere, should commemorate those who, in President Abraham Lincoln’s words, “gave the last full measure of devotion” to the United States.
Ty Seidule, Clinton, N.Y.
The writer, a retired brigadier general, served as vice chairman of the Congressional Naming Commission and is the author of “Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning With the Myth of the Lost Cause.” He teaches at Hamilton College.
It is about time the schools’ previous names were restored. Many Virginia local leaders took advantage of the chaos in 2020 to hastily remove Confederate iconography, even if it was against residents’ wishes. For example, the names of Lee-Jackson Memorial Highway and Lee Highway in Fairfax County were changed despite a public engagement process that showed a majority of residents supported keeping the names in place.
Kudos to the Shenandoah County School Board for successfully spearheading this democratic and honorable process. It should be a blueprint for others who seek the restoration of Confederate iconography that was illegally or violently removed.
Robert Lazaneo, Fairfax
As a retired Virginia public schools educator, I was disappointed to read that the school board for Shenandoah County has voted to reinstate the Confederate names of two of its schools. The decision itself is foolish, reversing a logical decision made by a previous school board. And it made me wonder how many of the conservative influencers in the county who orchestrated this change actually have students in the school system.
The school board stated the cost to install new signage bearing the schools’ reinstated names will be covered by private donations. Will these same private donors step forward when the school system has a budget crisis, or a dead HVAC system in a school leaves students learning in freezing or sweltering conditions?
School systems in Virginia are struggling to find and retain skilled teachers. After this decision, why would any prospective teacher consider applying to Shenandoah County Public Schools if this is what the school board prioritizes? And how must teachers in the Shenandoah system feel about the extra level of pressure that has been placed upon them with this regressive decision?
E.B. White once wrote: “The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.” Public school systems that instinctively avoid needed changes will continue to find difficult challenges in the future. Among the challenges the Shenandoah County School Board has created for itself is how to earn back the trust of every student, parent and teacher who looks to the school board to make reasonable decisions for the good of all, not just those who fear losing one version of the past.
William Avery Pike Jr., Richmond
As I read The Post’s article regarding the Shenandoah County School Board’s decision to restore the names of Confederate generals to two county schools, I was struck by the sadness of a statement by a Black man who asked the school board, “Why are we here tonight to go back to a time in history that was very cruel?”
The Post reported that the Coalition for Better Schools described the return of those schools’ former names as “essential to honor our community’s heritage.” Do they really support the racist, enslaver leaders of the Confederate South? Do they wish to honor and defend slavery for the sake of their heritage? And who does this affect the most? The Black families whose relatives were under the bondage of the enslavers. It’s astonishing that school board members can so easily discount this and sweep under the rug what slavery still means to Black Americans.
No one who wants to hold on to the Confederacy should ask why the rest of us can’t get over the past. Honoring the enslaver leaders of that cause is no way to embrace diversity and move ahead. Instead of finding another way to honor Shenandoah County’s past, the board just made another setback and division in Virginia regarding equality for all.
Christine Stunkard, Woodbridge
Regarding the May 8 Metro article “‘What should the name be in 2024?’”:
Removing Francis Scott Key’s name from the bridge would be a gateway to removing all former enslavers’ names and likenesses from public view and use. The litany of enslavers during the Colonial era starts with the Calvert family, Jesuits and the majority of plantation owners.
To go beyond performative land acknowledgments and its long-standing failure to recognize Indigenous citizens and as a way of seeking forgiveness for the annihilation of the Minqua people (also known as the Susquehannock), Maryland can rename the bridge “Conestoga” in honor of the community.
There are a number of museums in Baltimore to inform and educate the citizenry on slavery, its ills and progress made since 1865, and statues of Black American luminaries appear in the state capitol, the U.S. Capitol and on the names of schools. “Conestoga” can and should be added to the names of waterways and bridges to preserve the memory of the state’s Indigenous people.
Rico Newman, University Park
The writer is an elder of the Choptico Band of Piscataway Indians.
