Prince William County Schools names changed from Confederate General to honor deserving Blacks
By Mona Austin, The Slice Report
(Manassas, VA) -- Prince William County in Virginia is leading the way in its response to the call for school's names to be changed from racist figures. On Monday night the name of the Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was stripped from a middle and high school by a unanimous school board vote.
The middle school was renamed to honor an African American couple from Manassas. The late Celestine Braxton was an educator of over 30 years who led school integration efforts in the county starting at Marsteller Middle School. Her husband Carroll was one of the first African Americans in the U.S. Marines. The middle school will be called Unity Braxton Middle School. A beloved high school security guard, Arthur Reed is now the namesake for the upper gradesl, which will now be known as Unity Reed High School.
Four years ago the school division attempted to change the name of the high school.
Residents had also recommended former VA Gov. Doug Wilder, who was the first African American to lead the state, as well as others such as Lucy Griffin. According to a petition that was shared for signatures, According to a change.org petition that reccevied 1.638 signatures, "On July 21, 1861 at The First Battle of Manassas, Lucinda "Lucy" Griffin, a young African American slave girl risked her life to assist an elderly woman at "The Henry House" on Spring Hill."
On June 5 the School Superintendent Dr. Steven L. Walts had presented to students, parents and staff, an “Action Plan to Combat Racism” which called for renaming the two schools as well as prohibiting the wearing or flying of the Confederate flag on school property and the forming of a community panel to review the division’s memorandum of understanding regarding the school resource officers currently working in county schools.
“We can no longer represent the Confederacy in our schools,” Walts wrote. “It is an insult and an affront to our students, especially in schools where the majority of the students are of color.”
Nationally there have been calls to remove statues representing the confederacy or of slave owners and to change the names of institutions that bear such names. In the state capitol, Richmond, VA Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the removal the statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee there a week earlier.
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