The Virginia chapter of the NAACP has sued the Shenandoah County School Board over two schools being renamed after Confederate generals.
The NAACP chapter and five Shenandoah County students claim in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday that the School Board violated the First and Fourteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act.
The plaintiffs ask in the complaint that the court order the School Board to remove the Confederate names and the mascots, and prevent any future renaming involving Confederate leaders or references to the Confederacy. The plaintiffs also request that the court require the School Board to remove all remaining vestiges of the dual school system previously operated in the county (the system once segregated its schools).
The plaintiffs accuse the board of creating an unlawful and discriminatory educational environment for Black students, according to a news release issued by the NAACP. Organization representatives also announced the lawsuit at a news conference outside the Shenandoah County Circuit Court courthouse in Woodstock on Tuesday.
The Washington Lawyers’ Committee and Covington & Burling LLP represent the Virginia NAACP and student families named in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
The School Board voted on May 9 to rename Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School to their prior Confederate names, Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School, respectively. The three namesake Confederate leaders— Robert E. Lee, general-in-chief of the Confederate States Army, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, lieutenant general of the Northern Virginia’s Second Corps Army, and Turner Ashby, brigadier general— fought to preserve slavery and segregation, according to the NAACP.
The NAACP cites in its media release Shenandoah County’s “long history of running a segregated school system and opposing integration.” The county built Stonewall Jackson High in 1959 as an all-white school, five years after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of schools. The county did not allow Black students to enroll in high school until the 1963-64 school year as part of Virginia’s “massive resistance” to desegregation.
In addition to the Virginia State Conference NAACP, the complaint identifies adults who joined the suit on behalf of their minor children as plaintiffs. The lawsuit identifies the School Board as the defendant. The plaintiffs seek declaratory and injunctive relief for violation of the students’ rights.
“This case challenges the Shenandoah County School Board’s ... recent reaffirmation of the original names assigned to two schools to honor Confederate generals — a government action that endorses a discriminatory and harmful message of Black inferiority and subjugation — in violation of Plaintiffs’ First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and statutory rights,” the complaint states.
Shenandoah County Public Schools opened Stonewall Jackson High School for the 1959-1960 year as an all-White school. The county built Stonewall Jackson Elementary School around the same time then renamed it Ashby Lee Elementary School in 1975. The schools remained segregated through 1962. Both schools bore the names of the Confederate generals from 1959 through 2021.
The plaintiff accuses the School Board of violating the minors’ First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution.
“The Confederate school names and mascots represent a particular ideological view that Black people are inferior and that is pro-slavery ... and that endorses current-day White Supremacist movements,” the complaint states. “Among the well-known values of the Confederacy are the vehement defense of the institution of slavery and the treatment of Black individuals as inferior.
“The use of Stonewall Jackson “Generals” (the school’s mascot) imbues the name with the Confederacy’s racist, pro-slavery ideologies,” the complaint states.
The plaintiffs claim that the requirement that students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities wear uniforms or other apparel bearing names honoring the Confederacy, or to participate in those activities as a member of the Stonewall Jackson “Generals,” violates the right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs allege in Count 2 of the complaint that the School Board violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in state-supported institutions, such as schools.
“(The) Defendant School Board’s decision to restore the original Confederate names to Shenandoah County schools was motivated by a discriminatory intent or purpose,” the complaint states. “The Confederacy and its leadership are inextricably intertwined with the history of slavery in America and continue to be viewed as symbols of racial oppression.”
The complaint states that the board’s actions in May to reinstate the schools' names “were taken with full knowledge of the historical context of the original naming, with full knowledge of the reasons why Defendant School Board voted to retire the names in 2020, and after hearing from both Black and White members in the community who expressed their view that the names in the present day continue to glorify the values of the Confederacy and discriminate against Black students.”
The complaint goes on to state that board members purported to rely on a “sham survey” as a pretext to justify their votes to reinstate the names.
The plaintiffs claim in the complaint that the board violated Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. The board receives federal assistance for programs and extracurricular activities.
“(The) Defendant School Board’s decision to reinstate the Confederate school names, and team and student-body names, discriminates against Black students on the basis of race because it disparages, humiliates, and harms Black students and their families by using a government stamp of approval to honor leaders of the Confederacy,” the complaint states.
The fourth count claims the board violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, in which no “state shall deny equal educational opportunity to an individual on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, by . . . the failure of an educational agency which has formerly practiced such deliberate segregation to take affirmative steps . . . to remove the vestiges of a dual school system.”
The plaintiffs allege that “Black students are denied equal educational opportunities because the deliberate retention of the school names creates a stigma against and feeling of inferiority among Black students who attend Ashby Lee ES and Stonewall Jackson HS. Black students are negatively impacted by the exposure to Confederate names, symbolism, and imagery and experience psychological, emotional, and academic harm.”
