VA Governor Calls For Removal of Confederate Names From Schools

RICHMOND, VA — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wants school districts across the state to change school names that honor Confederate leaders, writing Monday in a letter to school board leaders that those names "reflect our broken and racist past."

Northam said it is time to change school names and mascots that memorialize Confederate leaders or sympathizers. As with Confederate statues, schools with Confederate names and symbols have a "traumatizing impact on students, families, teachers and staff of all backgrounds," he wrote in the letter.

The governor's decision to push local leaders on the school name issue is part of a trend across the nation to consider removing statues and monuments and changing the names of schools that celebrate the Confederacy and segregationists. As of 2019, Virginia's 14 Confederate school names were the second-most in the country, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Tuesday, citing data from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Northam said school boards should follow his lead when in early June he announced his plan to remove a Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond. These monuments, like school names, celebrate what a state or community values most, the governor said.

"Today, I come to you with a similar request," Northam said. "Like the statues we see displayed across Virginia, the names of public places, streets, and schools send messages to our children about what we value most as a society."

"When those names reflect our broken and racist past, they also perpetuate the hurt inextricably woven into this past," he wrote. "When our public schools are named after individuals who advanced slavery and systemic racism, and we allow those names to remain on school property, we tacitly endorse their values as our own. This is no longer acceptable."

In late June, the Fairfax County School Board voted to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield. Once a new name is chosen, it will take effect in the 2020-2021 school year. In recent years, officials in Fairfax and Arlington counties have renamed other schools associated with the Confederacy.

Also in Fairfax County, its Board of Supervisors approved a motion last month to begin the process of inventorying all public places in the county that have Confederate names as a step toward renaming them. This includes all monuments, street names, recreation centers and parks, as well as all county buildings and properties.

Last week, the Loudoun County School Board voted unanimously to remove Raiders as the nickname for Loudoun County High School in Leesburg in response to the name's association with John Mosby, a Confederate colonel during the American Civil War. One member of the Loudoun school board, who voted to change school's nickname, noted that the costs of replacing the nickname could exceed $1 million.

In his letter to school board leaders, Northam said "the financial costs of changing school names are minimal compared to the generations that suffered through American slavery, the Confederacy, the Jim-Crow era, massive resistance, and contemporary manifestation of systemic racism, like the school-to-prison pipeline."

"Recognizing the harmful impact these school names have on our children, I am calling on school boards to evaluate the history behind your school names," the governor wrote. "Now is the time to change them to reflect the inclusive, diverse, and welcoming school community every child deserves, and that we, as leaders of the Commonwealth, have a civic duty to foster."

RELATED:

• Fairfax Begins Process To Rename Confederate Properties
• School Board Votes To Get Rid Of Raiders As High School Nickname
• Northam Orders Removal Of Gen. Robert E. Lee Statue In Richmond