The South’s now-controversial past continues to be erased from schools across the country as progressives seek to erase history itself — in favor of lauding liberals they deem worthy.
The latest is in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy during the American Civil War.
The Richmond school board voted 6-1 on Monday night to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School, as the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
“It’s incredibly powerful that in the capital of the Confederacy, where we had a school named for an individual who fought to maintain slavery, … now we’re renaming that school after the first black president,” Superintendent Jason Kamras told the Times-Dispatch.
“A lot of our kids, and our kids at J.E.B. Stuart, see themselves in Barack Obama.”
J.E.B.(James Earl Brown) Stuart was a major general and cavalry commander who died at age 31 at the Battle of Yellow Tavern in 1864, as his biography at History notes. The Richmond, Virginia, school was the last in the city to be named after a confederate general, according to the Times-Dispatch.
One board member was disappointed by the decision to change the name to Barack Obama.
But she would have preferred it was changed to Michelle Obama.
“I am disappointed that we did not honor a local hero,” Carol Wolf said after the vote, according to the Times-Dispatch. “And if we are honoring the Obamas, I would have preferred naming the school after Michelle [Obama], who was very active in this nation’s schools.”
The Richmond school board’s decision continues a trend of schools deciding to remove the names of confederate icons.
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A Jackson, Mississippi, school made a similar decision in October 2017. Davis International Baccalaureate Elementary School, named for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States during the Civil War, also changed its name to Barack Obama Elementary School, reported The Washington Post at the time.
An Oklahoma school ignited controversy back in May by changing the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School — it merely dropped the “Robert E.” from its name and changed it to philanthropist Adelaide Lee.
Richmond’s elementary school will join a number of schools across the country that now bear the name of the 44th president, including schools in New Haven, Connecticut, and in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
Virginia has been the battleground for a number of contested school names, as the Times-Dispatch notes. It cites the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, which claims that 15 of the nation’s 100 remaining Confederate-named schools are in Virginia.
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It hasn’t all gone the progressives’ way, however: The newspaper reported that the school board in Hanover County, Virginia, voted in April to “keep the names of Lee-Davis High School (Confederates) and Stonewall Jackson Middle School (Rebels).”
As Americans sort out the nation’s rich and complicated history, it looks like the South is continuing to lose battles well into the 21st century.
Kyle Becker is a content writer and producer with LifeZette. Follow him on Twitter.
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