A request to change the name of Lee-Jackson Elementary School—named in honor of Confederate Gens. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee—will be on Tuesday’s agenda of the Mathews County School Board.
The school board meeting will begin at 6 p.m. in the Mathews High School media center.
Kamilah Turner, a Lee-Jackson alumna and 2001 Mathews High School graduate, has sent the board a letter asking that it consider naming the school something else because she said the current name glorifies two leaders of the Confederacy and, by extension, honoring the slave-owning antebellum South. She has also created an online petition asking others to join her, as well as suggest a new possible name for the school.
“Ms. Turner and I have been in contact over the past few days. I have invited her to send the comments she plans to present to the school board on the 21st and the petition summary to me ahead of the regularly scheduled meeting,” Mathews County Superintendent of Schools Nancy Welch...