My Virginia County Is Bringing Back the Confederate School Names

At first it seemed like a somewhat local story:

** the School Board of the Virginia county where I live -- Shenandoah County -- had in 2020 changed the names of some schools from Confederate generals to neutral names.
** that provoked an uprising in the local population, that identifies strongly with the Confederacy;
** the uprising led to a whole new group on the School Board;
** a public meeting was to be held, followed by a vote, on whether the Confederate names should be restored.

That meeting -- and the 5-1 vote to turn Mountain View High School back into Stonewall Jackson High School -- turned out to be national and international news: BBC, Reuters, NY Times, etc.

I published an op/ed piece about the whole issue-- critiquing both the Confederacy and the way the 2020 School Board had acted. In this video, I share that piece and a whole lot of other relevant information-- speaking as one who has studied in depth both the rise of the Confederacy leading to the Civil War, and the role that the Confederacy has continued to play in American political life.