A descendant of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson has rebuked a decision from a Virginia county school board to honor his ancestor on CNN's First of All With Victor Blackwell on Saturday.
On Friday, the Shenandoah County School Board voted to restore the names of two schools that were previously named after Civil War Confederate generals.
In July 2021, Stonewall Jackson High and Ashby Lee Elementary were renamed Mountain View High School and Honey Run Elementary School as schools across the country have done with names and symbols associated with the Confederacy following Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that hit a peak in 2020.
However, the school district, which is predominantly white and Republican, became the first to reverse its Confederate name-stripping. After the 5-1 vote, the elementary and high school will go back to their previous names honoring three well-known Confederate generals—Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson and Turner Ashby.
Jackson worked alongside Lee, commander the Army of Northern Virginia, during much of the Civil War. Jackson and his troops played an instrumental part in several battles—the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Antietam, the battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville.
Newsweek reached out to the chairman of the Shenandoah County School Board Dennis Barlow via email for comment.
The great-great-grandson of Jackson, Warren Christian, joined the dissenting voices of the decision to restore Shenandoah County's school names.
Christian told CNN's Victor Blackwell on Saturday morning that he was "saddened" and "disappointed" in the decision. However, he added: "As a firm believer in democracy, public schooling and local control of schools, I respect their right to rename the school, and I respect their right to do what is morally wrong."
Jackson's descendant talked of a "courageous" eighth grade student named Aaliyah "who stood up in front of the school board and she said, 'I'm a Black student and if the names are restored, I would have to represent a man who fought for my ancestors to be slaves. That makes me feel like I'm disrespecting my ancestors and going against what my family and I believe.'"
Christian questioned how the school board could vote to restore the names "after that brave student and others so clearly and cogently explained how that this would harm them."
Blackwell then asked Christian's thoughts about an argument made by the Coalition for Better Schools, who pushed to restore the names. The coalition said in a letter to the Virginia school board, "We believe that revisiting this decision is essential to honor our community's heritage and respect the wishes of the majority."
Christian responded to the coalition's argument: "I think it's important to remember our heritage, to honor our heritage, to honor our history, remember our history and most importantly, to learn from our history.
"And to me, the most important lesson from the Civil War was really simple—slavery was wrong and slavery that was justified by a strong belief in white supremacy that put white people at the top of a racial hierarchy and Black people on the bottom, so strong that it made it seem OK for one person to enslave another is also just very clearly wrong."
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