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Fight to Change School’s Racist Name
Thursday, June 15, 2017 at 2:16PM VIRGINIA, June 8—Forty advocates for changing J.E.B. Stuart High School’s racist name rocked Virginia’s Fairfax County School Board meeting with bold anti-racist speeches amid a cheering throng of supporters.
Students Give Leadership
In this two-year fight, Black students in the high school have given leadership. Two Black Stuart high school students led off tonight’s testimonies, declaring that unless the school board changed the name, it would forever be linked with the racist segregationist school board that named the school in 1958.
“I walk into the weight room [every Tuesday and Thursday] to see a giant mural of J. E. B Stuart painted on a wall in front of me. He’s portrayed like a hero...This sends a message to me that General Stuart and what he fought for is deemed heroic…My ancestors being bought and sold like cattle is OK, because J.E.B. Stuart was a patriot,” said one student.
19th Century Fascist
Stuart was a general and considered the “eyes and ears” of the Confederate Army. He fought to preserve slavery in the 1860s during the Civil War in the United States. Stuart helped capture white anti-racist abolitionist John Brown at Harpers Ferry in 1859. (With the help of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, John Brown organized armed insurrections against slave owners. For his fight against slavery, he was executed.)
Racist Stuart made a name for himself by literally fighting to keep the right to oppress, exploit, and murder Black and indigenous peoples. He served during Bleeding Kansas and in the bloody border wars against indigenous people.
J.E.B. Stuart is the most diverse high school in Fairfax County: only a quarter of the students are white, a little over 60 percent are Latin and Black. This struggle to change the high school’s name is giving the school and county community an opportunity to be on the side of anti-racism. Some adults and students who are in favor of keeping Stuart’s name said they were called white supremacists and felt intimated. But that is no excuse for their racism!
The school board is scheduled to vote on the name change on June 22. More next issue!
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