The Kanawha County Board of Education has rightly voted 5-0 to remove the name of the slave-owning traitor Stonewall Jackson from the most racially diverse middle school in West Virginia.
The name of the Confederate general, who owned six enslaved people during his life, has been glorified on the school since it was built as a white-only institution in 1940. Today, 42 percent of the student body identifies as Black, and another 9 percent identify as "two or more races."
ACLU-WV congratulates community members who organized and rallied around this issue. We commend school board members who listened to the community’s concerns and took action. And we applaud the dismantling of this symbol of white supremacy.