Editorial: With malice toward none (VA)

[struggle4progress]

... In some ways, it's actually satisfying to see young African-American students attending schools named after dead Confederate generals. Perhaps the ultimate victory over racial bigotry is to celebrate the image of these young minds being nurtured, and learning to read and write, in schools named for the very men who tried to deprive them of that right.

But maybe that's asking too much. Perhaps relegating some things to history is what's called for, particularly given that our Civil War history is in no danger of being lost.

We must also point out that many of the schools named for Southern Civil War heroes weren't so named as a way to honor the Confederate war dead. Many of these schools were opened or renamed in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision integrating the public schools and the disgraceful period of "Massive Resistance" that followed.

Naming a public building for Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis in the late 1800s would have been clearly been seen as an honor to those who fought for the South. But to name these buildings after these men in the 1950s and 1960s was a display of angry defiance to the very idea that black students deserve to be educated equally ...

http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/editorials/dp-edt-schools-confederacy-20160515-story.html