VIRGINIA: The education board for a rural
Virginia county
voted early Friday to restore the names of Confederate generals stripped from two schools in 2020, making the mostly white, Republican district the first in the US to take such an action.
By a 5-1 vote, the Shenandoah County board overturned its 2020 decision that stripped a public high school and elementary school of their original names honouring three military members of the pro-slavery South in the
Civil War
.
The vote bucked a four-year trend of
US schools
and other public institutions removing names and symbols associated with the Confederacy, following protests for
racial justice
sparked by the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020. Among more than 60 schools that have abolished Confederate appellations since 2020, none had reversed course.