Editor, Gazette-Journal:
We should never forget our history as Americans and acknowledge that America had invested much in slavery. With the first slave ship descending upon Jamestown in 1619, only an hour’s drive from Mathews County, America maintained slavery for two centuries before it was destroyed in a bloody Civil War that took nearly 1 million lives and destroyed billions of dollars in property.
It is our moral responsibility to teach new generations about slavery and the war that divided our nation. However, remembering our history is not the same as honoring it. While Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson’s names should live forever in textbooks and our national consciousness, they should never adorn places of honor.
It is well past time to officially change Lee-Jackson Elementary School. Children should not be forced to go to school under the name of men who fought to keep their ancestors enslaved. No child should read in their textbook about what Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Ja...